For weeks now, students have walked around campus with pillows taped to their chests, newspapers in their hands, and have not used their phones at all throughout the school days. For the most dedicated Class Assassin competitors, these are necessary measures to avoid being caught off guard and eliminated.
Class Assassin is a long-standing game in which contestants are assigned a target in their grade. In order to eliminate their targets, students must photograph their opponents in a specific action, such as using their phone or without a specified object. Behind the scenes, Class Assassin is a large-scale operation, with emails frequently going out about new targets and challenges, and frequent updates on Instagram regarding recent eliminations.
As the game progresses, challenges have become more extreme and players have become more intense. Satabhisha Sarkar ’27, a member of her class’s top eight assassins, spoke on how her approach to the game has shifted since the start of the challenge.
“At first, when the rules were things like you have to be holding onto The Phillipian or you can’t be on your phone, I was like I am going to very stubbornly follow these rules… We recently hit the top 12 and that’s when [the organizers] encouraged us to figure out who the other players were,” said Sarkar. She continued, “It implied that you should now start planning around who our opponents are [and] who our potential assassins could be… We then started interacting with the [other] players a bit more, and I’ve heard of certain partnerships and interactions between players.”
Class Assassin also provides a way for students to meet new people in their grade and acts as a commonality. Sarkar was one student who mentioned this, noting how it’s become integrated in many of her friendships.
“It’s really something that a lot of people are following. I don’t know about other grades, but at least in the class of ’27 and in my friend group, I’ve found that a lot of people are invested in the game, even though they’re not playing, because their friends are in the game. As it gets more high stakes, people realize ‘this is serious,’ [or] ‘so and so’s a really good player.’ It gives us something to talk about, almost like a shared hobby, and kind of bridges the gap between our differences by giving us a common interest,” said Sarkar.
Representatives from the Class of ’27 created a variety of fun challenges for a more compelling event. Patrick Xu ’27, one Representative, shared the strategizing process for coming up with unique challenges.
“The phone [aspect] was brought back from last year. We really enjoyed it, and then I think we just wanted to get creative, trying to make it more difficult each time. So we had the newspaper one, and then we saw lots of strategies from there, and then we kind of continued to make it more difficult… And then most recently, [you] had to catch someone walking through a doorway. And we had to implement that one because the remaining people were getting too good at carrying things around, because you’re going to have to go through a doorway during your day,” said Xu.
Ozochi Onunaku ’25, a senior class representative and an organizer of the ’25 Class Assassin game, spoke on the varied communication methods used to run the game, emphasizing its sophistication.
“[Student Body Co-President] Nate Liang has created this website that makes the process of logging in kills and sending out emails [easier]. It’s very quick and efficient. We also send out updates on who gets killed on our Instagram, as well as … updates on the amount of kills for today, who’s the biggest murderer in the grade or who’s had the most kills, and then like any reminders,” said Onunaku. “We try to make it as equitable as possible. Let’s hypothetically say a person doesn’t have social media, then we update them on Outlook.”
Anny Wang ’26, a student representative for her class and an organizer of Upper Class Assassins, elaborated on Friendly Assassins, a spin-off initiative started by fellow class representative Frank Hu ’26 where students get paired to complete challenges together. She explained how it’s aimed to bond students and create an environment for connection and friendly assassination.
“The normal assassins is really fun because it’s competitive and also you get to the main objective is that you get to know people who you maybe never talk to in order to assassinate them… We thought that normal assassins could be a little exclusive because once you’re out you don’t really have a chance to keep going in this game. You’re not able to keep getting to know people so we wanted to create this friendly assassins where people work together and really bond over the task that you have to do. We really wanted to channel the idea of the assassins to connect more of our grade through friendly assassins,” said Wang.
