I actually just found out that they're running a Oracle RAC environment
so my JDBC url needs to look like this for it to work.
url=jdbc
racle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION=(LOAD_BALANCE=o n)(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=myhost1.edu)(PORT=1 521))
(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=myhost2.edu)(PORT=152 1))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=h8sontst)))
Thanks for everyones help.