On your post on LinkedIn, you said this:
> I was instructed to take down my demo site (and its handful of fake demo classes) or else they would begin the process that would culminate with my expulsion.
And now here, you say this:
> They followed up today to thank me for doing it, but also indicated that they were putting a hold on my account anyway. As a result, I am not going to be able to register for my final quarter and have been de facto expelled at the end of this quarter.
> Unless, that is, I agree to work on a comparable solution for the university focused on solving the underlying problem I was building HuskySwap for. They would presumably own the IP and were clear that I wouldn’t be compensated. But it was implied that they would then remove the hold, allowing me to graduate.
I don't think there's any reason to have faith that their leadership will make things right. It sounds like they've already moved the goalposts once, and there's no reason to trust that they wouldn't do it again later. They no longer deserve the presumption of good faith.
As an alternative to what the options here seem to be saying, I can't help but wonder if some other university might be more willing to work with you without having to go through all of the blackmail. If this is something that's actually valuable to UW, it probably would be valuable to others as well, and without the threat of expulsion, you might be able to get better terms from them; maybe someone here with a connection to a more open-minded university could help get the door open to making a more fair deal? If finishing your degree is important to you, and you still don't have any desire to make a business out of this, maybe some form of scholarship in return for making a system for them for something like this? Alternately, if you do end up wanting to own the IP and monetize it in some way, you could try to rework the idea to be a service you sell to universities rather than offer for free to students. Even if you don't want to sell it, you could always offer it to universities for free with some terms that require attribution to you (and maybe also stipulate that no one is allowed to share the code with UW, since you deserve some compensation from them even if you don't want it from anyone else).