For many years at Martin High School, the senior class has been practicing a curious tradition, a game called Assassins. Last month, some students tried to bring the game to AHS, but to no avail.

“I just so happened to sit next to the person who wrote most of the code, and he was talking about his coding, and that’s where the idea formed,” Brian Caviness, senior, said.

In order to play, students sign up on an online roster, leave their phone number, and then wait for their first target to be sent to them via text. The next step is to find the target, while they too are being hunted, and mark them with a marker or highlighter. The last man standing is the ultimate assassin. There are rules in place that prevent a student from being harmed or from disrupting class.

Caviness hoped to unify the senior class by playing the game here.

“First here, best here. If other schools can have fun then we can have fun too,” he said. “Plus it’s a great senior game to finish out high school.”

On the Friday Caviness introduced the game via an independant Twitter page, Principal Shahveer Dhalla requested that the page be taken down and the game cancelled.

“It was just wrong place, wrong time kinda thing,” Caviness said. “To authorities it looked like an instigator for crime so they shut it down so that nothing could happen.”

Dhalla agreed and shared an example of how wrong the game can go.

“I didn’t feel like it was safe for our school,” he said. “I know that another high school started it, and I know that because of it there was an issue where they had to call out emergency response services.”

There was talk of the game perhaps being developed with the assistance of Dhalla, but Caviness dismissed the idea.

“The game might’ve been able to work if I had been in cooperation with Dhalla in the first place” he said.

In the age of cell phones, smart watches and Youtube, distractions are already rampant and Dhalla was worried about adding another one.

“It’s all good and well to say we’re going to have these rules in place for the game and abide by them, but you get to that competitive point,” he said. “You’re going to cross the boundary of this is a fun game into this is causing a disruption.”

Marlene Roddy, Martin High School principal, concurred with Dhalla.

“[Assassins] is a fun game for the students but it is disruptive to our school environment,” she said. “We have had injuries and basically last year we banned it from being played on our campus.”

Dhalla said he is open to ideas for games that can unify the senior class but, students must go through the proper channels for approval.