HN user
Yeah... I've had this happen as well.
When was the last memorable time you just went outside and gazed at nature?
I find ideas tend to come to me when I'm not around my computer and when I'm just wandering around or looking out at the lake day dreaming.
The DMCA is only to get the repos down.
This is more of a service issue where the University probably doesn't provide a standard git repo so students need to either set one up or have fun merging by hand. Unfortunately they have chosen a public GitHub repo rather than a private repo like BitBucket.
Really if the class they're in provided a git repo they wouldn't have this issue.