Memory protection
It's hard to feel sympathetic to anyone who chose to purchase a computer without memory protection and then expected a multiuser workload to operate on it. Even the most primitive operating system of all time had the "General Protection Fault" exception. The most I was ever able to damage my uni's computers was with a fork bomb, but that was on a line of computers on the Sperry side of Unisys, not the Univac side.
(My university was in Pennsylvania, you see, and at the time there were rules about universities having to buy computers from vendors in the same state if possible. Blue Bell, Pennsylvania was home to Unisys.)
At a university, one is not exactly likely to have the best of the best in terms of system administrators. This is the stuff of legend, after all. But at least this was back in the old days when universities actually taught something.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
