Normally I don't toot my own horn by quoting myself, but my grandboss pulled these out of an email I sent to a campus-wide mailing list, so what the heck. The discussion was about firewalls and exceptions, but abstracted, they can apply to anything.
Too often sysadmins get wrapped up in dogmatic statements with no ground in the middle for compromise (in the sense of an agreement or a settlement, not a compromise of security). Saying "thou shalt" is rarely a good way to initiate agreement. In my experience, it's usually an outstanding way to provoke an argument, and I've got better things to do . . .
Dealing with these things is our job. In an academic setting, our job is to make the network usable for the users. If we can do that while making our jobs easier, great. If we can't, well, that's too bad. If our jobs were easy, our bosses could just hire chimpanzees to do them.
A challenge to readers: are you dogmatic about anything? Why? If you can't immediately come up with a good reason, should you re-examine your position? (Maybe you should anyway.)
As system administrators and security professionals, we should see ourselves as enablers of technology, not protectors of the faith. Even the Knights Templar were burned at the stake when they got too big for their britches.