As the summer approaches, the school year will soon end and the Class of 2024 seniors will be graduating. But before the seniors graduate, there will be one event that the students can look forward to: the Senior Assassin competition.
What is Senior Assassin? Senior Assassin is a popular trend among high school students where a bunch of seniors are assigned a target they have to eliminate that person with a water gun within a week. This event is also a good way to make money for students and also for people to socialize. There is usually a list of rules such as times when you can and can’t eliminate your target, how you can avoid getting sprayed at, and the consequences if you don’t eliminate your target in time, as well as there being multiple rounds. The last person standing will get a prize of money but for the students at Malden High, the winner will get 50% of the profit made.
The people who were involved with the planning of the event included seniors, Larissa Granja, Victoria Gammon, Erikah Macharia, and Shuyi Chen. For players to join, they would need to sign a Google Form and pay an entry fee. The seniors in charge of this event needed to ensure everything was handled and everyone had a role. Gammon mentioned, “What we also did was that Erikah and Shuyi handled the money, I handled creating the list; people who’s the assassin, who’s your target, and Shuyi also handled the Instagram page, so it really just us talking in our group chat about it.” But, the decision of the event was not hard to think about. Gammon also said, “It’s been a [social media] trend going on, so we decided why not try it.”
Planner Erikah Macharia agreed and explained, “This was a trend all over social media like TikTok, and when we all saw those videos of everyone having fun and funny ways of getting their target. Today, there are not a lot of class events that we do on our own like outside of school so I just thought this would be a good idea” On another note, everyone’s assigned target is completely randomized so you might not have met your person before, but that means that you can make friends along the way.
One thing about Senior Assassin is although it can be fun, we also have to make sure that everyone who is participating is playing fair and that the game is safe for everyone else. Gammon mentioned that to make sure everyone is playing correctly, she believes that having to trust everyone is the plan. “I think mostly just trust because I feel like me, Shuyi, Erikah, and Larissa all just trust that our classmates are being fair and safe. There are rules and regulations on the Instagram that we posted and also the emails that we sent out for Senior Assassin, so it’s basically just trusting that everyone follows the rules and everything.”
Macharia also had similar thoughts as well. She stated, “When people get assigned their target, they have to send a photo and a video just for proof that there weren’t any foul plays and when you got them that you actually did.”
To ensure safety for everyone, Gammon commented, “Just follow the rules, and given the fact that most of us are 18 and 17, we’re practically grown adults so we hope that everyone will be safe playing this game.”
There is no doubt that Senior Assassin will be very competitive and with the fierceness of the game, there will need to be a lot of planning ahead. Arnibish Ray, who eliminated two people in this first round, only took a few hours before he eliminated his second person. For his planning, he said, “For the first person, I honestly just kind of ran into her after school. For the second person, with my friend Nathan, we knew that Chad had lacrosse practice [and] we just waited. We hid behind the school bus and we waited until he left and I shot him.”
Another participant, Bia Santos, said she still has not eliminated her target but said that she has a good plan ahead. “I’m planning on either kind of stalking their house or just getting them after school at some point, but it’s top-secret information and I can’t let them know.”
The year is ending for seniors, and this is one of the many things that seniors look forward to and everyone had different decisions when deciding to participate. Macharia who not only planned this event but also decided to join the game as well explained, “I wanted to participate because when I made the idea, it seemed really fun so I decided that I want to be part of it and I feel very excited but also nervous because I know that someone is hunting me and I know who has me.”
Santos is also very excited about this but at the same time, is paranoid that someone will get her eliminated. “I decided to participate because I thought it would be a fun way to end the school year and it’s also a great way to be friends with everybody at the same time because we all have the same goal.”
When creating goals for this, it is really important. For Gammon, she wants to make sure that everyone has a good time and expressed, “It’s not really for money or anything but I think everyone just wants to have fun because it’s been a trend going on, so we decided why not try it. We just want everyone to have fun as we’re leaving high school and have the last memories of high school.”
For the participants’ main goal, everyone had almost the same answer, which was to have fun, but to most importantly also win the money. Santos competitively said, “If I have to stab people in the back to win, I will.”
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