It's definitely not legal, especially if your school is funded by the public. That "free internet and power" is paid by someone, and if it's the public, it's kind of a dick move.
They can't see what's in your ssh or VPN tunnels necessarily, but they can usually see where the packets are originating from and going to. So if you're say, accessing it from home directly to the server via VPN or SSH, if you're not doing so using a full VPN service like Mull, they'll be able to see the origin IP of your SSH or VPN handshakes, and thus your home IP.
I doubt that, to be honest. The supplies to make the items will also go up in price, and the US simply doesn't have the industrial power and cheap labor that other countries have to make them. GOP voters think that somehow it'll make all things cheaper (which actually would be a bad thing, deflation isn't a good sign for the economy), but the price of everything is about to skyrocket.
That's not to mention that the few suppliers that are 100% US based would just crank up their prices anyway, because they can.
Personally, and not having much experience in economics, I think prices will skyrocket, people will stop buying things, and then that will cause huge amounts of deflation, bringing the US right into a deep recession. I mean, my partner and friends have already stopped spending as much, and that was before today. It's only going to get worse.