Welcome to the 2007-2008 Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance eXceL Awards! This year’s topic, secrets, promises to generate some of the most interesting entries the competition has ever seen. Personal secrets, family secrets, secrets to success, secret love, trade secrets, national secrets – they are all around us. It’s fun to be in on a secret. But if you’re not in, just wait: it will come out soon.

It was easy to share a secret when you were little – you just whispered it behind your hand, or passed a note. Odds are your friend forgot what you told them and it remained a secret forever. But things have changed! With a text message, a secret can spread at the speed of wireless. Cell phone photos of Abu Ghraib and Hollywood starlets share images internationally, images that were never intended to be seen and that create scandal. Media clamor to share government, corporate, political, and many other secrets with you around the clock.

Everyone has secrets, and everyone is impacted by the secrets those around us are keeping. How do you feel about secrets? How do they affect you? The eXceL Awards asks Indiana high school students to consider how secrets affect their lives and to express that in one of six categories: 2-D art, 3-D art, music, performance art, video art and writing. And please review the information you find on this website carefully, as you are accountable for the rules and guidelines of the competition.