没有POP或IMAP的邮件客户端

My university refused to allow us to access out mail via POP or IMAP etc so I want to write a GTK based C app that sits in my notifcation area and does the job of a mail client notifier. Because I can't use anything like POP or IMAP, what would be a good way to do it? I guess I could scrape the HTML and look for a tag that is only present in unread mail or something?My university refused to allow us to access out