Seniors sprint across neighborhoods and hide between bushes, water guns in hand, while scanning the streets for their target and waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger. This year’s senior assassin, an annual student-run game where students are assigned classmates as targets to “kill” with water guns is back, with a money prize of $700 and unlimited bragging rights on the line.
The class of 2026’s game started on April 3, with 106 seniors playing. Currently, there are six players still competing, with the winner expected to be announced in the following week.
Junior Kelly Pacheco is this year’s senior assassin coordinator, and explained how the game works.
“Friday at 8:15 at night, new targets will open up, and you’ll get assigned a random target. And then you have a week to get your target out. And when you get your target, you get an elimination point, which means you’re safe for the next week,” she said.
Kelly also explained the Purge Day rule, when stakes get even higher. “Friday is the only day of the week where it’s “Purge Day,” which means nobody is safe, and you can get anybody out, no matter if they’re your target or not,” she said.
This year, senior assassin became a showcase of creativity and strategy, as players started to think outside the box. Senior Syius Rivera Rigali decided to spend a night in his car to avoid being taken out. Cars are one of the safe zones during the game.
“It was the first day of the game, and me and my friend were working out at Be Strong, and then both our people showed up, and I ran into the bathroom and stayed there for a while … And then I got home, and they were there, and I was like, ‘They’re probably going to be here next morning, so I might as well just stay in my car,’ because I was going to get up early to go get my target anyway,” he said.
Senior Milo Sullivan, who also helped organize the event, said, “My target for the first round was Xeandre Miller, and he’s an athlete. I chased him around for like 30 minutes one morning … I kept looking for him, and he hid under his neighbor’s tarp.”
Among the most talked-about moments of the game was Nick Merriam’s elimination of Ronan Mullin, which was turned into a creative video edit that was shared on the senior assassin Instagram page, and has been viewed 3,450 times. One of the rules of the game is that students are required to film themselves when they eliminate their target.
Behind the scenes, senior assassin is organized by Kelly with help from senior coordinators Milo Sullivan and Nora Motahari. “I want to make sure that everything runs smoothly and is fun for the grade, because everyone’s worked really hard, and we deserve a fun little game at the end of the year,” Nora said.
While the game is popular among students, it is not without its detractors. Critics of the game take issue with the way that it may normalize violence, or potentially lead to misunderstandings with law enforcement if students’ water guns resemble real weapons. For this reason, the seniors’ version of the game includes a variety of rules, including a requirement that students’ water guns not resemble real weapons.
For most seniors, the biggest impact of the game is how it brings classmates together in the final months of high school.
Elle Mone said, “I think that it definitely brings everyone together, because even if there are little arguments, most of the time they’re either fake or everyone laughs about them. Either way, it’s everyone talking and interacting with each other — which doesn’t always happen. It’s super-fun, and has brought people closer together in sort of a different or nontraditional way.”