Seniors Participate in Annual Senior Assassin Game
1st Place: Cooper Burn
2nd Place: Minseo Kim
3rd Place: Maxwell Li
By PHIN GIBBS and JOONYOUNG HEO
For the past few weeks, the Academy witnessed the annual game of Senior Assassin — a frenzy of seniors armed with water pistols running across the quads, scampering down stairs, and ducking behind trees.
Senior Assassin is a springtime tradition for the senior class that started in 2022. Each player is assigned to tag another player with water, and the pairings are undisclosed. A player is out of the game when they are tagged. Thereafter, the perpetrator is awarded a point and reassigned to a new target. The game will thus continue until one player is left.
Generally, this year’s participant pool has found Senior Assassin greatly enjoyable. “There was so much paranoia, it felt apocalyptic,” senior Angela Zhang said. “First morning I walk across campus and I think I see my assassin, so I hid behind a tree for three minutes. It was the most humiliating moment of my life, because here I am hugging a tree just to avoid getting tagged. I got taken out after scoring two kills, but it was so much fun to watch all the seniors freak out and run across campus.”
“I don’t think I’ve run so much in one week before,” senior Minseo Kim said. “It definitely helps with exercise, for one. The game’s a bit stressful, but it’s really exciting. Tagging Cooper was absolutely insane because I was planning out the whole strategy for a week. The organizers have done such a good job, especially with the ‘green eggs and ham’ prisoner’s dilemma. They definitely know how to keep things interesting.”
“I feel like it connects you with the community,” senior Max Chuang said. “You get to talk to a lot of people and try to find out information. It was a lot of fun figuring out unique ways to get around campus.”
Fun was a theme for everyone involved, regardless of how long they lasted. “I had a great experience,” senior Tucker Gibbs said. “I was only in for two days, and that was very, very sad. But it was a lot of fun regardless. I really enjoyed figuring out who had who and tracking down the three people I killed. A fantastic time all around.”
“It was fun while I was in the game,” senior Hannah Rubin said. “I lasted for about half a day, but I enjoyed walking outside between classes and feeling like I always had to watch my back, because someone could come up behind me at any moment. But that excitement was also cut short. I was just about to get my target when someone else got me first. Shame.”
By Instagram poll, some players were even awarded a second chance in the spirit of fun. “I was on the prowl at 7:15 a.m. on the first day when someone dumped a cup of water over my head,” senior Kaitlin Clark said. “I’d never seen that person in my life. Luckily, I got another chance. I spent an entire Sunday doing my homework by the big window on the second floor of the gym, waiting for Will Hackett to show up. I even made a TikTok. In the end, the big man outran me like a primal ape, but I did get him the next day.”
For some, however, playing the game has come at a cost. “People are injuring themselves,” Zhang said. “They go far in their attempts to win the whole thing. People are getting black eyes, and some guy broke his leg. That’s not the game’s or the organizer’s fault — it’s just reflective of the senior class’ drive to win everything.”
Chuang was one of those injured. “I was running from my assassin, Kate Nixon,” he said. “My friends and I were just going to the Assembly Hall when she came running up the stairs. So I jumped off the ledge from the back of the Academy Building near Mr. Ibbotson’s classroom. It was like 9:00 p.m. and there were definitely branches and dirt all over the floor. So, I landed weirdly and broke both my tibia and fibula.”
In light of such injuries and school rules, the Academy administration has taken an active role in moderating the game. In April, many faculty members reported to the Deans’ Office that seniors were creating a mess with water indoors, subsequently detailed as an official rule violation on Instagram. The use of water in general has been made very limited. Furthermore, following concerns from Campus Safety, seniors were barred from using “water guns shaped like actual guns,” as the game organizer announced.
Participants had mixed reactions to the new policy. “I really wish they’d allow us to use water come May,” Gibbs said. “Water makes it fun, and you don’t need to be able to run super fast. You just have to be sneaky. Now that’s going to change, so I hope we can find a better compromise than completely banning water.”
“Instead of banning the water, I wish they would’ve just made sure people are using it in an appropriate way,” Rubin said. “That’s better than getting rid of water guns altogether. Water makes it fun, especially now that it’s so nice outside.”
On the other hand, players understood certain rule changes to the game. “It’s understandable to not want us to use things that look like actual guns,” Zhang said. “We’re privileged enough at Exeter to be able to run around with water guns and have fun, but a lot of people aren’t. I’m thinking about all the police brutality cases and how innocent children have been murdered by police because they were thought to be holding real guns, when really they were just holding toy or water guns. So I do see why we shouldn’t use gun-looking water guns — and it’s an easy fix, since Super Soakers are not technically guns.”
At the end of the day, however, these abrupt rule changes have not detracted from general fun for most participants. “I know some things got rough and some people broke the rules, but it really was fun,” Kim said. “It’s a good game with great twists.”
The ultimate winner, announced on April 27 through the @thegameatexeter Instagram account, was senior Cooper Burn with 11 points, six tags, 1 ham. He was the second to last standing. In second place was senior Minseo Kim, and in third place was senior Maxwell Li. All three finalists received various prizes in their mailbox. A second iteration of the game looks to continue in May.
