[Tristan Lall]

Elsewhere on the Internet, I was reading about places that require applications to acquire a rescued dog. Although the conditions they set were reasonable individually, and the idea of a screening questionnaire was reasonable and even prudent, the particular mix of questions and the format in which they were presented was borderline offensive and almost assuredly counterproductive.

I think something similar is happening here. The team has legitimate interests, and probably has an extreme aversion to the kinds of risks represented by students with split commitments. It's just unfortunate that they feel their only defence is to be completely inflexible about it by insisting upon an onerous agreement.

I disagree with you (to some extent, at least) about a lot of the individual policies, but I think you've correctly identified a system that is flawed on balance.