Windows services for macintosh

At school we use windows and macintosh machines. The Administrator guy tells me that windows "services for macintosh" makes it so that my password has to be 8 character or less to use the mac machines. This is complete bull poop. With the new operating systems permitting passwords with seveal dozen characters I like to use passphrases like "mypasswordispasswordandyouwillnevercrackitwithjohnorl0ptcrack" but with this limit I'm forced to make my domain password shorter. It there a plan for services for macintosh to change this or is my school's Mac administrator lying to me and doesn't want to do a reconfig? How can this be resolved besides using stronger passwords.(which arent really strong-John really does work wonders when run for a week or two)