NHS seniors "assassinated" all over town

"Senior Assassin" is a popular tradition at high schools across the country, and each year, Niwot High School seniors look forward to taking part in the fun. While the rules vary slightly from round to round and from school to school, some elements remain consistent. At the core of the game, each player gets randomly assigned a target, and over the next few weeks, it is their responsibility to "assassinate" that person.

Each assassination must be recorded and posted online. Seniors who play buy in to the game for $10, and at the end, the winning students will receive the entire pot as the prize.

At Niwot, there are two allowed methods of assassination. The first is tapping the target with a spoon labeled with their name, and the second is spraying them with water using a Gatorade Squeeze Bottle. A key part of the game lies in the restrictions around when and where assassinations can occur. Banned locations for assassinations include school grounds, places of worship, a student's workplace, sports practices and club meetings, and inside someone's house.

Because school grounds are off-limits, players share their locations with each other to track targets down outside of school hours. This year, many of the best eliminations have taken place on students' driveways, while getting dinner at a restaurant, or even at the airport.

It is possible for players to protect themselves, however. Wearing swimming goggles or pool floats grants temporary immunity except on "Purge Days." On Purge Days, all protections are void aside from the standard time and location restrictions.

To advance, a player must not only avoid being eliminated but also successfully take out their assigned target. So far, there have been two rounds. In the first round, each student was assigned a single person for the full three weeks. This means that students whose "assassin" had been eliminated during that time were safe until the next round.

In the second round, the challenge increased. Students who eliminated their target were re-assigned the target of the person they had taken out, so no one could ever be fully safe throughout the round. Players can also announce a "bounty" on their targets on Instagram for $20 which allows any player to go after the target. Placing a bounty on a target helps those who are struggling to eliminate their target stay in the game.

Senior Neharika Bhandari is one of less than 30 students moving on to the third round. She says she was shocked when she received her first target. "I had not interacted with my target since sophomore year and I kind of forgot who he was until I saw his name show up on the email," she said. "I didn't really have a plan at the beginning so I stalked him for a couple of days and got a sense of what he does and where he goes."

Bhandari initially followed a common strategy to eliminate her target. She used the location sharing service, Life360, to determine whether he was at home. Bhandari hoped to surprise her target when he answered this door.

However, when her original plan failed, she took a unique approach. "I hid behind a bush while she [Bhandari's friend] went to ring the doorbell and when he opened the door I ran out of the bush and went to tap with the spoon, but he saw me and backed up. It then took me eight minutes to convince him to step out so I could get him. We were standing by his door and just talking and hoping he would come out because I couldn't go into his house to get him out," she said.

Bhandari and others find it interesting to see alliances form between players. For example, friends band together to get a target, or convince each other's targets that someone else is their assassin. Another Niwot senior has said that he's seen and been part of "friends helping friends get each other's targets out."

Despite the stress and competitive nature of the event, Bhandari believes that Senior Assassin ultimately brings students together. She said, "Since it's the last time we're going to be seeing so many people, Senior Assassin kind of brings us together. For example, when I was trying to get my target out, I had an eight minute conversation with him and his girlfriend and I realized that I missed talking to these people."

With two rounds down and the competition heating up, Bhandari and other Niwot seniors are getting ready for an intense third round.