24 | news / the standard / march 2020
Survive & Advance seniors give preview of this year’s edition of assassins
W
ith the looming joy of graduation comes end of the year activities specialized to the senior class that underclassmen look forward to throughout their high school tenure. One of these exciting endeavors conducted by the senior class is “Assassins.” The game consists of “assassinating” specific targets tailored to each individual participant through means of a water gun. Certain rounds of elimination and time frames exist and the winner who “assassinates” all their targets wins the cash pool that each participant pays into. Senior Trey Kays was appointed by last year’s head member to lead assassins for the class of 2020. Although the game is considered a tradition by many, it is entirely planned and organized by the soon-to-be graduates. “It’s strictly private; it’s not associated with the school,” Kays said. Kays then approached long-time friend, senior Sophie Oatman to help him plan out the game for this spring.
“The previous senior class hands it off to someone,” Oatman said. “Trey needed a girl because it’s a guy and a girl who run it and I was willing to help because I thought it would be really fun because I wanted to be involved whether I was playing in it or organizing it.” Kays highlighted some of the major rules and guidelines that the seniors are playing “assassins” by this year. “It’s $20 to play,” Kays said. “It starts right after spring break, and then it ends whenever the last person gets out, which is usually around the week after prom. The first round is going to be longer than all the other rounds just because there’s the most amount of people, so that’ll be like five days to a week as your target range for the first three or four rounds. Then it shortens down to like three days and two days.” As for how targets will be selected, Oatman and Kays said they want to mostly randomize it. “I think, personally, there should be some kind of randomizer as far as who targets [are],” Oatman said, “I know that can get kind of tricky when you get into friend groups and all of that.” But Kays also added how they can pair up friends while not damaging relationships. “We kind of want to do it randomly but throw in some friends here and there,” Kays said. Kays also discussed the guidelines behind legal eliminations in the game’s rules. “You can’t get someone in the school, in the school parking lot, at their house, in their garage or at their work,” Kays said. “But as soon as they leave their house or their garage, they’re fair game, or if they get off work their work parking lot is fair game.”
