There has recently been an epidemic of students mercilessly slaughtering their fellow classmates, friends and enemies alike. Their weapons? Highlighters. However, although it started out as a seemingly harmless and amusing game, Ninja Assassin is beginning to cause some trouble throughout the entire school district.

The game was allegedly brought to this school by senior Dylan Bain, who learned about it at his Bible study.

“I brought up the topic at our lunch table a couple of months ago and we played with just the table,” Bain said. “Other classes have started playing recently and from what I hear there’s over 150 kids that play in the school.”

Most students who have played it can agree that the game is definitely fun.

“I just started and it’s the best game I’ve ever played,” freshman Grace Berrett said. “My favorite part about the game is getting someone else and hiding behind things and surprise attacks.”

The rules of the game are simple: everyone has a target and everyone is a target. To kill someone, the assassin must mark their target across the neck or wrist with a highlighter. Nobody knows who is targeting them, adding to the thrill.

“My favorite part is the anticipation that anyone can get you, because you don’t know who is targeting you,” sophomore Kaitlan Duncan said. “I’ve had fun every time I played and I don’t really see what’s wrong with playing.”

There are also academic benefits.

“It encourages me to learn. It gets me way more excited about going to class,” Berrett said.

Despite the upsides to the new game, there are risks that many students did not foresee. The game first got out of control at the middle school, to the point of administrative intervention.

“People were getting hurt because people were jabbing highlighters into other people on accident,” eighth grader Peyton Sachse said. “It got too intense, so Mr. Parker (assistant principal Kevin Parker) talked to us. Now we get in trouble if someone finds out we’re playing it.”

This attitude has now spread to the high school as well.

Some of the teachers agree that there are drawbacks to playing the game during school hours, which is the only time available for all the students to be together.

“I feel that sometimes, students can focus on the game rather than on the work they are supposed to be doing,” English teacher Katherine Harrison said. “We received an e-mail instructing us to stop any students we saw playing the game.”

However, students have begun trying to work around this obstacle.

“Sometimes we make rules that you can’t kill people during certain classes if the teacher is getting mad,” Duncan said. “But then it’s harder because you usually have to get people in the halls.”

Despite controversy over the game, it is likely that students will continue to play it, whether it is against the rules or not.

“I actually feel honored that I started something that got so big,” Bain said. “I feel like it’s my baby.”