As senior year comes to an end, it is time for the class of 2026 to participate in one of the most important senior traditions at Ida B Wells-Barnett (IBW): senior assassin. Excitement grows for students, all gearing up and joining apps, to try and be crowned champion of the 2026 senior assassin game, all trying to win the prize.
According to the tradition, seniors from the school will be assigned a target to eliminate by shooting them with a water gun. Often catching them off-guard in parking lots, outside of the mall, or coffee spots, sometimes even in their driveways, while being careful not to get eliminated as well. The game takes place exclusively outside of school grounds and hours, with eliminations happening daily, and continues over several weeks until only one student is left. The 2026 session of Senior Assassin will start this Friday, the 10th of April, 2026, at 7:30.
It will be organized in four rounds, each round with a specific role and a significant number of eliminations coming with it. The first round will be played from the 10th to the 17th. Then the second round will occur from the 18th to the 22nd, followed by the third round from the 23rd to the 27th and the last one from the 28th to May 1st.
Each round will work in the same way, getting progressively shorter as we approach the end, with a day on which protections won’t be allowed. Students must have eliminated their target by the end of each round, or face automatic elimination.
The price to get into the game is $5, with the final price being the total amount of all students’ participation. While the exact amount remains undisclosed, Anaya Blank, a junior at IBW and one of the admins of the game, says, “I don’t know if I’m technically allowed to say it, but it’s a lot of money.” The price is estimated to be around $700 to $800.To make sure that the game is safe and fair, some rules have been defined. Most of them are based on last year’s game, as it happened to have been a success. However, this year, respect is emphasized and required towards the coordinators and the other players. Complains and insults will not be tolerated.
Colorful and fake-looking water guns are required; a student bringing in a real-looking gun will be taken out of the game. Water guns are not allowed at school as well, to ensure surety. Eliminations must also be recorded and submitted for them to count, and they need to be reported before the hunt starts for the next target.
Certain locations act as safe zones, including students’ homes, school grounds, school-related events and workplaces while clocked in. However, players can protect themselves outside of those safe zones by wearing floaties or goggles, adding a humorous but strategic element to the game. To make the game more complicated, those protections aren’t allowed on Sundays.
Bounties have been added to the game. If people don’t respect the rules they get a warning and if they don’t respect it again they get a bounty. Bounties are also decided by the admins based on bad behavior. Those bounties mean that everyone in the game is allowed to get the rule breaker, until they are out of the game.
As the first day of the game approaches, nervousness mixed with excitement can be felt in the air of IBW. Addison Kuhns, a senior at IBW and a participant in the game, says, “I’m very nervous but excited to start senior assassin… when people played last year, it looked really fun.”
This year, students decided to take their game to the next level, bedazzling their water guns and accessories or customizing them to get the most out of this one-time experience. My friends and I got together to bedazzle our guns and decide our strategies for the game. It makes the experience just more personal and caring.
Behind the scenes, two students take care of the flow of the game. Juniors Mia Durham-Lebus and Anaya Blank make sure that everything runs smoothly and keep track of the game. They take care of the game’s app and Instagram, where eliminations and rules are announced. Their efforts help to ensure a great experience for everyone.
“The game is completely separate from the school and is not school affiliated so we are simply volunteering our time outside of the school day to be admins this year.” says Durham-Lebus.
According to Blank, the organization of the game has been stressful, but it has been really fun. “We really have to take everything into account, but it is going better than last year” as students have been a lot more respectful towards the admins.
The Splashin app is where the game is organized, and it is starting to grow a real community. Students are personalizing their profiles, choosing fun profile pictures to seem tougher and using the app to track people to decide where and how to attack. Planning their strategies, people get really thrilled to start a real hunt.
One of the most awaited parts of the game is the car rides with friends, where students blast their music while trying to get people out as soon as possible in this special hunt. This aspect of the game changes it from a simple game to a fun experience full of adrenaline, shared between friend groups.
Kuhns says, “I think this tradition makes everyone feel like more of a community and it gets people together.”
As their time in high school is almost over, the senior assassin serves as a way to make seniors feel more like a community and join in a final bonding experience to make their senior year the most memorable. The objective is not winning, it’s having fun and enjoying the last month of the year.
