Your backup system must support the intricacies of HFS+ (the format of Mac hard disks) - otherwise you might loose important data in resource forks and extended attributes.
Rsync in all versions to Mac OS X 10.5 doesn't properly backup resource forks and extended attributes. I've heard there's changes in 10.6 but I've not investigated or tested them.
Use the application 'Superduper' to store your Mac files in a 'Sparsebundle'.
A 'Sparsebundle' is a single file that supports HFS+ and can live on other files systems (such as your uni's servers).

Unfortunately there are millions of people who would like their phone unlocked.