Every year as graduation approaches, a number of senior activities take place, one of the more anticipated being Senior Assassin. Renamed to “Senior Survivor” starting this year, the game began at the beginning of May and came to a rapid conclusion on the seniors’ last day of school.

In order to participate, seniors must pay an entrance fee of $10. Each senior is then assigned a target. One of the crucial elements of Senior Survivor is that each participant keeps the target a secret. Participants are given a two week period to shoot their individual targets with a water gun at a location that is off of school grounds. Once only one person remains, that person is declared the winner and receives a prize of around $800.

Often, many seniors become so dedicated to Senior Survivor that they choose to remain inside at all times in order to avoid being hit by the person targeting them. Although this tactic often interrupts students’ social lives, many agree that it is worth the risk.

A few rules have been set in place for participants in order to ensure that the game is carried out efficiently each year. For one, students must eliminate their target within the first two weeks of the game in order to advance into another round and receive a new target.

Another relatively new rule is that if a participant attempts to eliminate a target and instead the target hits said participant first, the target has fifteen minutes to escape from the site in order to avoid being eliminated.

Due to the fact that more than half of the senior class participates and there can only be one winner, the game often drags on into the summer months. However, this year the game wrapped up a lot sooner.

Following the seniors’ last day of high school, all seniors attended a field day at the Town Hall. One of the activities took place in the Sanborn Auditorium on the second floor, where students performed in front of their classmates on stage in various games and challenges. The auditorium also has a balcony that extends above the general sitting area, where all of the seniors sat during the activity. Senior Jake Quilty seized this opportunity to get his final target out and, while standing on the balcony, was declared the winner of Senior Survivor for the class of 2018.

Although ending dramatically, Senior Survivor was rather quiet this year. Since so many seniors employed the tactic of constantly staying indoors as to prevent their elimination, participants assigned these students as targets often did not have the opportunity to play and were eliminated early on.

Senior Charlie James intended to get his target out of the game within the first few days; however, his target rarely stepped outside long enough for James to eliminate him. James recalls from his experience, “I didn’t do anything.” Unfortunately, many other seniors shared a similar experience to James due to the popularity of this tactic.

Although many seniors were inactive throughout the duration of the game, many members of the class of 2018 were able to come together and share one last memory by way of this highly anticipated event. Senior Anne Lipsett agrees with this, stating,“It was a really great way to get the whole class together to do something fun to end our time at HHS.”

The class of 2018 may have already graduated and moved on from high school, but one memory that they all can hold on to is the Senior Survivor game that took place in their last days of high school.