 "Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Hays")
 "Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Hays")
The Sullivans are facing financial uncertainty. The Bostonian family of four is living beyond their means. With a BMW M3 and a Sony Playstation 2, the salaries of Ed and Shawna simply can't cut it.
Their credit card debt is growing out of control, and they haven't started planning for their children's college education or their retirement.
The Sullivans will have to make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. Students who participated in "The Duel on the Heights" had 36 hours to create original solutions to hypothetical case studies, such as the Sullivans'.
The contest was a regional component of the national personal financial case study competition sponsored by the University of Arizona Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team.
Teams from Boston University, Bryant University, UMass-Dartmouth, Suffolk University, and the University of Southern Maine had 19 minutes to propose their plans for confronting the financial problems of their case study.
Yesterday, the team from BU was declared victorious and will advance to the "Duel in the Desert" in Tucson from March 10-13 at the University of Ariz.
"The teams presented, after much exhaustion, with very different styles," said Matthew Hays, president of BC SIFE and CSOM '05. "But I think the judges liked them all."
After Elliott Smith, a finance professor at BC, gave the keynote address on Friday, the case study was introduced. Students had from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday to work with their teammates on the given problem.
Finally, each team spent Sunday morning presenting. They had five minutes to set up, 19 minutes to present, and five minutes for a Q&A session.
At 12:45 p.m. Sunday, BU was announced the winner.
Though Hays was the chairman of the event, BC did not participate and will instead automatically advance to the national competition. "It was basically our job to make sure that everything ran well," said Hays.
BC SIFE solicited the panel of judges, which included a professor, but were able to avoid any possible judging biases when they were granted a spot in Tucson's national round.
The BC SIFE team includes Mike Wilhelm, CSOM '07, Yuri Samsonov and Eleanor Kim, both CSOM '06, and Hays. "We are definitely looking forward to participating on the national level," said Hays.
The team will compete against 17 other regional winners for cash prizes up to $3,000.
Both the national and regional programs, which are funded by Take Charge America, were developed to increase financial knowledge among college students.
The program comes as credit card debts stand at $2 trillion. Also, it is especially pertinent to students who will be inundated by hefty student loans in the coming years, specifically at a school like BC, which ranks in the top 10 in tuition costs.
"The Duel in the Desert is an exceptional program that has quickly gained widespread national attention for its unique approach in offering solutions to financial challenges," said Mike Hall, CEO of Take Charge America, a non-profit national consumer credit counseling company.
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