While there are doubtlessly many clueless administrators in the world, there's also something to be said about being smart in protecting yourself. During high school, I poked around aimlessly on some network drives and found an unsecure, unencrypted text file of sensitive personal information on a lot of students. I didn't really have any business looking, but there was also nothing at all keeping me out. Instead of talking to the first administrator I could find or shooting off a "Hey look at this" email, I spoke to the instructor with whom I had the best relationship with and could convince that I had no bad intentions, showed him the problem, and asked him to escalate it anonymously. He did so, the problem was fixed, case closed.