What you have to keep in mind is that while at HLA (at least when I was there) no student truly owned anything. Upon arrival an admintance counselor would escort you to your room and would begin going through all of your stuff with you. Anything deemed inappropriate would be confiscated and suposedly sent home. Anything they allowed you to keep could be confiscated at any moment and sent home. Anything your parents sent you was first rifiled through by staff members and anything they deemed inappropriate was confiscated and possibly sent home. Nothing was out of bounds. Any books that you recieved were "donated" to the library. You were supposedly allowed to get them back upon leaving but it didnt always work out that way. You also had a great deal of theft in the dorms.
As to moving rocks, this was fairly standard. When any general maintaince work couldnt be found we were generally forced to move rocks around a field and or railroad ties.