I would advise the students, professors, and dean that classroom
exercises are sufficiently ambiguous with respect to the term
"exercise"  to avoid them as the venue for disclosure of anything,
particularly  real business plans, criminal behavior admissions,
life-style inquiries, and the like.  There have been some awful cases of
bent feelings about broken confidences.  Students have it both ways
here: as the injured they can sue everyone in sight and yet as discloser
of hot gossip, they can claim the innocence of .. umm .. lambs.

Students have to be presumed to be laypersons with only the judgment of
students (presuming the do not already have a final grade in the class)
... and are, therefore, minimally or not at all credentialed to see and
hear this stuff.  At the big B schools, well, ... there should be
sufficient lawyers in their midst to obviate asking us.

Tell them to make something up.  Have fun.

Jim
--
James R. Brett, Ph.D., Director,
Office of University Research
CSU Long Beach
310-985-5314   310-985-8665 fax
xxxxxx@csulb.edu
http://www.csulb.edu/~wwwing/research.html