Question

Warning: this is an annoying Yeshivish-style question, but my mind just isn’t at ease…
 
Hello Rabbi,
I ran into an ethical dilemma, and I’d be happy to hear the Rabbi’s opinion on the matter:
I just started as a student at the Open University. As is the way with universities, some lecturers are better and some are worse. The lectures are recorded and uploaded to the site, but access is only for students for whom that lecturer is their direct instructor. However, on Telegram there are lectures from previous years, and I discovered that they were uploaded privately, against the university’s wishes. Now, both the students who studied with that lecturer last year and I paid exactly the same amount of money; the only difference between us is which random group we were assigned to. When I emailed the course coordinator, I even offered to pay money for the videos and gain access to them in a straightforward, honest way, but she refused and claimed that the university’s rules are that you may watch only the videos of your own lecturer, and nothing else.
It should be noted that the other students do watch those lectures (this is talked about openly in the various WhatsApp and Telegram groups; it took me a long time even to realize that perhaps the university itself had not uploaded them). As a result, they advance more in the material and have a greater potential to succeed on the exams than someone who does not watch the lectures—which of course may directly affect whoever gets a lower grade because he didn’t watch them, in terms of curve adjustments on the exam, etc. etc.
 
I feel that since there are many grounds for leniency, there is no difference between me and another student, so why should my portion be diminished just because of technical institutional rules? And furthermore, by what right does the university forbid me from viewing content that users uploaded to Telegram? Especially since they are aware of the situation, and there is here a kind of quasi-“property swept away by the sea” argument (I’m really not enthusiastic about that argument in general, only here I’m willing to add it as a supporting factor), and also the argument of “we compel against the trait of Sodom”—since I offered to pay and they refused in every possible way. Again, it felt to me like just rigid bureaucratic rules. Also, in this situation, if I do not watch, I may lose out because I’m at a disadvantage compared to the other students, and our grades depend to some extent on one another, so I feel there is room to be lenient.
 
Even so, since this issue is bothering me, and although everyone I’ve consulted about it thinks I’m crazy and that I need to start understanding how life works, I’m still turning to the Rabbi to hear his opinion. (I asked other rabbis too, in one form or another, trying to form a fuller picture. I hope that’s okay and that there isn’t any issue here of “if one asked a sage and he prohibited it, he should not ask another sage who will permit it” or something like that. That’s why I phrased this as a request for an opinion.) Thanks in advance!