A group of teenagers entered a Gurnee brunch restaurant wearing ski masks and carrying “guns”. A person who was eating in the restaurant proceeded to pull out his own concealed-carry weapon in order to protect themselves. Someone in the restaurant quickly revealed that the “guns” were actually just water guns and the teenagers were playing a common high school game called senior assassin. 

A similar situation happened in Itasca. A student was attempting to shoot their target while they were driving and lost control of the car. They got into a rollover crash, but luckily no one was hurt.

Senior assassin is a game played by high schoolers as an end of high school activity. In the game usually you pay to get entered and each person receives a target. The goal of the game is to not get shot by your target and shoot the target you received. Seniors at Prospect started senior assassin on April 15. Each student paid five dollars to either coordinator Julia Valentini  or Abby Davis to enter the game. They then enter everyone’s name into a google spreadsheet and randomize the order to assign people their targets. 

To keep students safe and avoid situations like the Gurnee restaurant and Itasca crash, the juniors who run the senior assassin instagram account have come up with many rules. Some of these rules include all school events and grounds are off limits, you must be invited into your target’s house by someone who lives in the house if you plan to get them there, you can’t be eliminated or shoot someone else from a moving vehicle so cars have to be in park, you can’t enter someone’s private property without being invited inside by the owner, inside places of worship are off limits, trespassing is not allowed, and anything illegal is not allowed. 

Student resource officer Tyler Johnson hasn’t received any complaints about the game besides some administrators having concerns about the students’ safety.

 “[Prospect students] are playing relatively safe and fine…” Johnson said. “The issue is [other] people aren’t playing responsibly.”

The school has sent out multiple emails warning people about the dangers of the game. An email was sent out April 17 by superintendent Scott Rowe urging students and parents to consider the consequences of playing this game. He advised students to avoid using items that could be mistaken for actual weapons and that the game should not interfere with public peace or safety. They also made sure to state that the game is not a school sanctioned or a school supported game. In an email sent out by Principal Greg Minter he said that students that play the game on campus or bring a weapon look alikes on campus will face consequences which might include the loss of participation in other end of the year senior activities. 

The seniors at Prospect, although taking the game seriously are also playing responsibly. 

“Here is the good thing about Mount Prospect: the town in general is pretty good,” Johnson said. “You guys are playing just fine.”