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Managed switches can easily limit port bandwidth to whatever they want. The university might be using something like MRTG to monitor individual ports on the switches so that it's easier to tell who is using the most bandwidth. When they start seeing spikes on that port, the obvious thing to do is start throttling that port, regardless of who you are.
I think they might have tried to contact you first and tell you to limit your bandwidth usage on your own accord, but depending on the size of your school it might not be that easy (read that UT has 37,000 students).
The school is having to pay for the bandwidth they use, and depending on their connection to the internet, you might be hogging quite a bit of their bandwidth. When I worked at the college I was attending, I was in charge of all the networks for the dorms. We had a T1 at the time for internet access and a T1 back to TA&M. 1.544 mb can be easily saturated these days.
The school is looking at the bottom line as far as other users on the network and cost. Whoever their internet provider is might give them a certain amount of bandwidth and then charge them more thereafter. I bet your college is also looking from the standpoint that its probably more common to catch viruses and whatnot over p2p. They're just looking out for their best intrests.
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"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."
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