Date: January 27, 2006

This is the first of a series of memos that we'll be sending to teams between now and the April competition. My hope is to try to provide you with as much information as possible so that everything works smoothly.

1. First, I'd like to thank all of you for your interest and to extend a special welcome to schools joining us for the first time. Although we've had a sprinkling of graduate teams in the past, we decided to launch a separate MBA/graduate track this year. And we're happy to see so much interest. As of today, the undergraduate field consists of: Army (probable]; California Polytechnic, Pomona [definite]; California State, Northridge [possible]; Concordia Irvine [definite]; LMU [definite]; Loyola/Chicago [probable]; Montgomery College [probable]; Navy [definite]; Saint Louis University [probable]; San Diego State [definite]; Texas A&M, College Station [probable]; Tuskegee [probable]; Utah Valley State [probable]; and Vanguard [possible]. The graduate field consists of: Atkinson Graduate School of Management, Willamette University [definite]; California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo [definite]; McGill University [definite]; Saint Louis University [probable]; and University of Washington [definite]. If I've made a mistake about your team's status, please correct me.

2. Most of the "probable" teams have submitted requests for financial assistance. If you plan to make a request but haven't done so yet, please get this to me by February 15. We will again have a small amount of money to use, and we try to stretch it as far as we can to help teams who otherwise couldn't make the trip.

3. I assume that you all know that there's a good deal of information about the competition on our web site. However, please let me know if we haven't covered anything.

4. From 2003 to 2005, a number of teams chose topics that were more closely related to "ethics and economics" or "ethics and public policy" than to "business ethics." Accordingly, for 2006, we're asking teams to choose topics related directly to an issue faced by a company or industry with the following exception. Because the point of the competition is to encourage students to work on ethical issues connected with their future professional lives, it seems to make sense to give the service academies greater latitude and to allow them to work on issues that are more closely related to "organizational ethics" than "business ethics," strictly speaking.

5. At this point, our plan is for the top two teams from each division to face off on Saturday night. As we've done in the past, the "final four" presentations will be given in front of everyone, and they're limited to 15 minutes with no Q&A. This year, we'll announce the "final four" at an event on Friday night. We recognize that this might be somewhat inconvenient for the MBA teams who have their preliminary round on Thursday, but we are working on some possibilities that we hope will be acceptable. First, if they want to, members of an MBA team can simply tourist around Los Angeles or spend the day at the beach. Second, we're working on a competition with a small cash award that will work like this. MBA teams attend any 3 of the undergraduate presentations on Friday and collectively fill out a "judging form" on the team's performance. The team that most closely matches the judges' scores for those presentations wins. Third, we're also working on "scavenger hunt-like" contests (for example, team that visits the largest number of ethnically diverse restaurants). We're still open to ideas on this.

6. We're sensitive to the the fact that when teams find out that they aren't one of the "final four," the wind can go out of their sails, as it were--especially if they aren't participating in the run on Saturday morning. So in addition to the "scavenger hunts," we're trying to come up with something they can participate in on Saturday afternoon that will keep them engaged. I'd appreciate any ideas that come to mind. That's it for now. Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions.

Tom White