?  So if I were being pointlessly cheap, I could use one
> strand of cat5 to populate two jacks?  Or are they carrying important
> grounding information?

Yes, you can. I have sevral locations at the school that we have done that.
It was much much cheaper and easier to spit the cable that it was to run
another line.

If you don't want to split it into 2 jack before you put it into the wall,
they actually make aftermarket splitters that you just put on both sides of
the connection.... and BAM!

Brian Cluff