Thanks to both of you for your quick replies. I'll talk to Al at kickoff this Saturday (Speaking of kickoff, I can't wait!
) and see what he has to say. Both of your replies line up with what I've seen in the past (not explicitly forbidden, but anecdotally it has been disallowed during competition). As for my teammate, I'm not sure with what authority he says that. I'll check with him later, as he sounded pretty definitive.
On a side note, I did find a workaround for the flash drive issue discussed in the original post. If any teams reading this in the future run into a similar issue, contact me and I can help you out.