Students hunt other students in UR Assassins

Kevin Alloway was sitting in the Jepson Quadrangle, watching an improvisation show, when, out of the black of night, a pair of balled-up socks whizzed past his head. An attempt had been made on his life. He looked around, but the would-be assassin was nowhere to be found, he said.

He went back to his residence hall after the show.The assassin was waiting for him, peering down from the top of the stairs, he said. Fortunately for Alloway, the assassin's aim was off and he was able to make it safely to his room.

Alloway, a University of Richmond freshman, was one of 187 students who participated in this year's UR Assassins game, in which students are given the name of another student in the game to "assassinate."

The list of names is circular, meaning a student would have to eliminate everyone else in the game to get to the person trying to assassinate them, said senior Jeff Hunt, one of the students responsible for running the game. The last person standing was the winner, he said. The game also offered a prize to the person with the most assassinations, Hunt said.

Alloway's fortune allowed him to set the pace for eliminations, winning the award with 16 assassinations, he said.

"I never went out and said, 'I'm going to try to get the most,' or 'I'm going to win the whole game,'" Alloway said. "I just had a few lucky days." He said that during one lucky stretch he had been able to eliminate four targets in Heilman Dining Center in two hours.

Senior Nick Annichiarico, the last man standing in the game, also benefitted from some good fortune. Facing elimination from a rule that states "if a seven-day period passes without a player eliminating someone, he is out," he managed to find his target with only an hour to spare, he said.

"I had an hour before Ring Dance, and if I didn't get him before then, I was out," he said. "I just walked by the kid's door, and he happened to be doing laundry at the very moment I walked by ... I would have lost; I would have been out otherwise."

The final elimination was also a chance meeting. Annichiarico said he had been doing research in Gottwald one evening when he saw a group of people enter the atrium below him, and he spotted his target, junior Josiah Routhier, among them.

"I just walked up to him and tapped him with the pair of socks," he said. "It took him a second to realize ... and then that was that."

This was the third consecutive year that the game had been hosted on campus, Hunt said. Hunt was responsible for passing out the assignments of targets, which he did from a Gmail account, he said.

The basic set of rules for the game included a 10-minute safe time after classes, when using the restroom, or after a failed assassination attempt. Part of his duties included mediating disputes over the rules, something which, he said, was more of an issue in this year's game than in years past.

Hunt said that the disputes had not necessarily been a bad thing, because it was a sign that the game was more active than in past years. "In previous games ... I'd have to eliminate 30 or 40 people [for not eliminating a target within a week]," he said. "This time I only eliminated, I think, 12 people. So that shows just how more active this game was."

He said that more than 200 students had played in last year's game, but that the overall quality of competition had improved this year. Only 20 or so people remained after the first week, and the whole game was completed in less than three weeks.

Strategy was present in both hiding from assassins and tracking down targets. Freshman Andy Miller said that his target, Routhier, had turned up the privacy settings on his Facebook page and had changed his profile name, which had made it harder for Miller to find a picture or other information about him.

Miller was eventually able to find a picture and gather information about Routhier through searches on Google and through mutual friends, he said. Alloway also said that he had frequently asked his friends whether they knew his target or could help him find Routhier. "Most of it was mutual friends and people knowing people, or people being willing to help me," he said.

Players said that Richmond had been an ideal school for the game because of its small student body and majority of students living on campus.

"At most, people are probably three-quarters of a mile from each other," Hunt said. "It's a good setting."

Said Annichiarico: "You're less likely [on a bigger campus] to know someone in between; you're less likely to know where they're going to be."

The game will likely be without its winners for next year's edition, as Annichiarico will be graduating, and Alloway said he would be content to rest on this year's success.

"I don't want to lose my [title]," Alloway said. "I'm going to quit while I'm ahead."

Contact reporter Casey Glick at casey.glick@richmond.edu