[the anti-liberal]

Yes, someone else pointed that out - and suggested that the school may have locked them, or something.

But the fact is, with their machines, if the dock is hidden and something is dragged to it, it doesn't come up and allow itself to be dropped on.

This means the dock has to be made really small to allow as much real estate as possible.

[HAL9000]

Thanks for jogging my memory. That Mac is probably running in “Parental Control” mode (in System Preferences/Accounts), which has a Finder checkbox option for “Modify the Dock”. That seems like a reasonable restriction for a public-access computer.