Since MacOS is based on unix and linux is also based off of unix how difficult would it be to get a binary for MacOSX to run on linux, specifically Ubuntu? Reason I'm asking is that my college has a proprietary virus scanner that they require students to use in order to connect to the network. They also a windows binary which I could hopefully get to run in WINE, but would it be easier to get the Mac binary working?

Please don't give me advice along the lines of talk to the college IT people and try to work something out. I plan to do so, but I would like to know what my worst case scenario is as I would hate to have to wipe linux and install xp .

MacOS binaries do not run on linux.
There are emulators... in Ubuntu, use synaptic's search function on "emulator".

Basilisk II for eg.

Which programs do they want you to use?

You could install the virus scanner in wine, but this is more or less just a fig leaf token effort, because that virus scanner wouldn't actually be "scanning" the entire file system (just wine's own directory). If you want to remain true to the spirit of their requirement, you could also set up your root directory "/" as a read-only Samba share, and configure a Windows computer's virus scanner to scan this share for viruses.

The would satisfy both IT people who don't understand Linux/wine, as well as those who understand the technical reasons for the externally scanned samba share.

MacOSX, while "based" off BSD, is not compatible. The main reason: "MacOSX" refers not to the underlaying OS, but more to its GUI and API, which uses the objective-c programing language, and its own extensions to a existing application standard. Basically, what this means: no way. Wine can emulate and implement the win32 ABI, but there is no project i know of that emulates the MacOSX ABI, GNUstep is probably the closest, but last i saw, its only trying to be API compatible, not ABI compatible that would be required for what you want, so unless you have the source codes to this scanner, just run it under Wine with the Windows version (if the IT are not smart enough to know about Linux, they probably are not going to be smart enough to know running it under Wine (they wont know what this is either) is pointless).

For completeness, I hope you eventually ask them how to meet the requirements when using Linux. They might say: "We don't support that."
Why? It's the fastest-growing OS in the world.
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If I find the right virus tools for Linux, can we use those?
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The point is to keep questioning (politely) until you get to the root cause. You will then have to decide if said root cause is something you are positioned to deal with. At a University, I would expect to find LOTS of Linux users--that will be part of your power.