.png)
As the school year comes to a close many seniors are relishing in a variety of class activities: Senior Sunset, Prom, Senior Picnic, banquet and yearbook distribution. In addition, like many other schools, Encinal seniors also engage in a senior wide game called Assassins. While the name sounds harsh, the game itself is rather tame. The game is set up by seniors, for seniors, and is meant to be an activity students can look forward to as a celebration of the end of their high school career.
Assassins is a tradition that's existed at Encinal for years. This year's game was set up by Senior Michael Leung.
“I felt like everyone was able to trust me to make this fair and efficient," said Leung.
Leung felt like it was important to have a fair game with participants who wouldn't go up in flames if they got out.
“Setting [the game] up this year was fun because I’ve always looked forward to it, seeing seniors play,” said Leung. “Our class was pretty excited so I thought it’d be nice to set it up and organize it for everyone. For the most part, it was easy making an [Instagram] account and collecting money, then distributing targets. Overall, the class made it easy on me to not have to make hard decisions,” Leung added. “I did take some inspiration from past years but mostly I went about the rules as if I was a player and made it so there would be as little errors as possible so people couldn't argue or try to take advantage of the rules."
Meet the Final Four
Images via Lila Duong
Seniors advancing to the third round: Dylan Good and Cohen Ruport, Kalyn Tran and Isis Gloriana, Brian Lin and Kash Mejia, and Andre Sagurit and Johnny Gao.
The game forces students to be as safe as possible in public, or else they risk getting "assassinated" by their assassins. Students who are playing can get shot with a squirt gun any time they are out of bounds of the safe zones. The school and the strip of third street next to the school are safe zones where students cannot be shot. However, anywhere else, unless inside an establishment, at home, or inside their car, are danger zones. With these rules, stakeouts and stealthy tactics are necessary for students to get their targets.
In this year's game a student and their partner were assigned another set of students to get out in an allotted time period; typically about two weeks long. If a partner gets out, but the other makes it to the next round, then that partner is back in the next round. Teams must get both of their targets out and survive in order to advance to the next round.
Senior Brian Lin had the cops called on him by a neighbor while staking out his targets in round one.
“We had already gotten Ellie out who was one of our first targets. I was trying to get my second target, but he was a bit difficult for us," said Lin. "I got Tyler's address from a couple of [unnamed] sources. Kash and I drove to his house and hid in front of his yard behind a couple of bushes. I was waiting for 30 minutes or so, as my partner drove away because he didn't want to wait. When I first got out of Kash’s car, his neighbor was outside too. He was looking at me because I was acting sus' as I slowly crept up to Tyler's house. Two patrol cars were trying to look for me. I was facetiming Kash saying ‘Kash I’m scared as f*** right now’ Then waited for another 10 minutes until I saw them drive past me. I was out in the open too so I was surprised they didn't see me.”
Brian definitely had a stressful time but advanced to the third and possibly last round.
Some students were relieved to get out early on.
“It sucked at first but eventually I started to look on the bright side," said Jack Connolly. "I saw some of my friends were living unhappily, always looking over their shoulders all the time. We were on our way home and as I got in the car, [my target] shoots me. I don’t regret getting in that car because I needed a ride home. I’ll do anything for a ride. My partner got himself out on purpose because he just didn’t want to be in it anymore...I was mad when I first got out. I called Sal, I was pretty mad but it took me like 15 minutes to think about the positives.
So far, this year’s Senior Assassins appears to be a success. Although the game is still going, so far all participants have come away with a memorable story about how they got out or how they eliminated their target. For all current juniors and underclassmen - this is an experience that all students should do when they become seniors, as long as they participate safely.
Kyle Hoffman contributed to this story.
Comments