Every year, the seniors at Pascack Hills and many other districts around the country compete in “Senior Assassin.” It is a highly competitive game, involving teams of two that are assigned another team that they have to shoot with water guns. It was all fun and games until Superintendent Sarah Bilotti and Hills Principal Timothy Wieland advised that the competition come to a stop.

On May 6, Superintendent Sarah Billoti shared her concerns about the senior activity after local police were involved in dealing with situations related to the game. Seniors were called down to the auditorium for an emergency senior class meeting, where Hills administration relayed that the game needed to end for safety reasons. 

To delve deeper into the game itself, each player pays an entrance fee, creates a team name, and then gets assigned their targets. Additionally, an unknown team has you as their target. From then on, you have a week of protecting yourself from your assassins, all while trying to get your target out. The last remaining team receives the entire cash prize. 

The main rules of the game include the following:

• You are safe from your assassins if you are wearing floaties
• The game is off-limits on school property during active hours
• Your “kill” only counts if it is recorded.
• Floaties do not count during the purge. All immunity is off.

To try to resolve the issue, Jordan Morrell, Hills senior and gamemaster, attempted to readjust the rules to ensure that the game would be safer to play. However, a majority of the seniors were dissatisfied with the new rules and eventually decided to call it quits. In the end, the 72 remaining seniors who were still in the running for the pot split the prize money. 

To see the perspectives of the seniors at Pascack Hills, a poll was sent out and there was one main view that was mutual. 

“I think that the game was run much more intensely than in previous years, which lends itself to hazards and accidents. In the past, “purges” were much rarer, but because there were so many every day this year, it felt like a constant game of high stress 24/7. While this was fun, it definitely was the reason for many spontaneous decisions and dangerous activities,” said a senior who participated in the game 

Along with the poll, students rated how they felt about the game coming to an end on a scale from 1-5. Roughly 60% of students were relieved that the high-intensity game concluded. While it was an unfortunate result, the superintendent’s office, as well as the majority of students, have agreed that precautions were not met, and it was the best decision to stop the tradition.