I go to a college that has a very tight firewall that blocks most ports making it hard to use programs that connect to outside servers. I do know that port 1080 is open because the school has given us a socks4 server to connect to applications such as Aol instant messenger. I play World of Warcraft and i am able to connect to it by using a program called Sockscap and running a socksified version of WoW through the socks4 that the school has given me.

I want to be able to run Ventrilo which is a voice chat program, but cannot seem to get anything to work. Just a few days ago I purchased a socks5 server and attempted to run vent through that using sockscap but was unable because the ports that the socks5 had were blocked. I requested that my socks be changed to a SSH tunnel proxy using ports 1080. I am looking at using a Putty but I am not sure how or even if it will work with Ventrilo.

Does anybody have any experience with this and can help me get vent through either the socks4 server or know how to set up the SSH so that Ventrilo will run through it?

If the network were locked down properly, then NOTHING would be accessible except
going thru the proxy server. VoIP (and other) programs are typically band due to their
bandwidth requirements.

Highly unlikely that you will defeat the the proxy.

I just received my new SSH and i am trying to get it to work through putty. There is an option of setting a proxy in putty, so I tried to put in the proxy that the school gave me. I then used the SSH as the host and set the tunnel to port D22. I keep getting a "server suddenly shut down connection" error. Is it just because the firewall is blocking it? or is it just some settings that I have wrong?

As you are performing SSH on both sides, the logs should tell you.
If there's no explanation from SSH as to why the closure, then the ISP did the blocking