After learning the rules of Senior Assasins, you receive a text message containing the sacred name: your first target. You have a full two weeks from this day to assassinate them. After tracking down their weekly schedule, planning a sneak attack, and successfully squirting them with water, you are on to your next target. You now have only one week to get your second target.
Since April 22, seniors at Walpole High School have been in this mindset. Senior Assassins is a game that, for many, is an exciting (and paranoia-enticing) event that hands students the chance to win over $500. To play, after paying five dollars and recieving the name of your first target, students have two weeks to ‘kill’ the person they are assigned, which simply requires getting water on them. If one successfully kills his or her target and makes it through that time without being attacked by his or her assassin, this person then has one week to assassinate his or her first target’s assigned target. Eventually, the game will narrow down to only two seniors, and whoever assassinates the other first will win the well-deserved jackpot. If the game lasts longer than expected, the time-limit will end at graduation — so any survivors will split the winnings at that time.
As of Saturday, May 17, there are only 6 students left in the game from the original total being a bit over 130. The total winnings for those students still left in the game by graduation is just short of $600.
Attacking and preventing yourself from being attacked is not as easy as many hopeful winners first believed. A list of 14 important guidelines are to be followed in order for a kill to count. Included in the rulebook is that all kills must take place outside of the high school; students cannot be assassinated on school grounds between the hours of 7am and 3pm; one cannot catch his or her target while in a car (more specifically, the car must be off); one needs at least one witness; one must be invited into his or her target’s house in order for the kill to count; if one hears his or her target call out that he or she can see the assassin, the assassin must leave the scene for five minutes; and one cannot get his or her target while he or she is at work.
Michelle Monahan, Senior Class President and organizer of the game for this year, has been playing the part of referee on controversial kills that are reported to her. An influx of text messages and calls from aggravated students seeking clarification and a final decision are not rare for Michelle during this stressful time. She said, “This game gets crazy and it’s tough when you’re dealing with super competitive kids.”
This year, like many in the past, many seniors have gone above and beyond any expected effort to get as many targets as possible. Sydney King, a senior who was nixed from the game early on, was caught by surprise when her assassin caught her out in public at night. “I was coming home from one of my sister’s away basketball games, and I was caught by surprise when my assassin killed me as I was filling up my gas tank..she followed me all the way down the highway. I just didn’t expect it,” King said.
Monahan gives credit to the controversy between Erin Richardson and Nolan Froese as one of the top stress-indicing decisions. Richardson, still cleaning up equipment after lacrosse practice at night, saw Nolan Froese come out of his hiding spot, thus leading her to call out his name. Calling out one’s assassin’s name if they are in view rewards a free 5 minutes to flee the scene and escape from the assassin. After calling out Nolan’s name, she fled from the field and went straight to her car, but Nolan continued to chase after her and squirt her with his water gun. “I was really mad about it first,” she said, “so I called Michelle [Monahan] and explained the situation to her, she said I was still in. Nolan was mad about it…I didn’t care enough to get in a fight with him…I forfeited.”
In regards to the controversial assassination, Michelle said, “It was crazy and super stressful having a million different people trying to call and text me and get me on their side. In the end, I had multiple witness accounts that didn’t match up.”
Froese was later disqualified when he failed to get his next target, Julianne Saia within one week. Though Saia was recently disqualified for not getting her second target, Cam Hanley, in time, she skillfully escaped all of Nolan’s attacks with great brevity (and through use of her home garage.)
Many other seniors who are deeply integrated in the game stride through many different targets because of their creative ways of attack. The most popular high-effort attacks talked about this year were by assassins who got dismissed early from class to beat their target home, effortlessly were invited into the house by unsuspecting parents, and even hid in their target’s front bushes for hours on end.
