It could be a music server with mpd – then you could configure it to stream over http to other devices. Or you could configure it as a client for a music server you keep somewhere else.

I suspect the real reason they are doing this is to condition the students to accept oppressive and unjust surveillance in future workplaces.

Lots of jazz and rock music meets these criteria

Just ext4 on my Linux things; I got scared away from btrfs because of some file loss horror stories