While Jon Viera '11 was trapped in Thorne's first-floor bathroom on Tuesday afternoon, juniors Chris Adams, Miles Pope, and J.J. Alger played a game of Scrabble outside the door, patiently waiting for the moment when Viera might make a run for it.
Viera and Adams were playing Assassin, a game that requires players to "kill" their assigned targets by hitting them with a sock. Adams was Viera's assassin, assigned to "kill" the first year by throwing a sock at him.
According to Residential Life student employees Joho Strom '09 and Margo Linton '08, who organized the game, 271 students signed up to participate. By Strom's estimate, anywhere from one-fourth to one-tenth of the players may still be "alive."
"Getting that kind of turnout at Bowdoin is pretty difficult," said Strom. "Some students are getting far more into it than I had thought possible."
Players received blue cards in their mailboxes on Friday, October 12. On the front of each card was the name of the participant's first victim; the rules of the game were listed on the back.
To kill a player, the assassin must hit his or her assigned victim with a clean sock. Then, the victim must give the assassin his or her own card, and the assassin must hunt down that new target. Safe zones, where players cannot be killed, are "bathrooms, bedrooms, classes, and the Res Life office," according to the card.
The last player "alive" wins both the game and an iPod Nano.
The organizers do not plan on running the game again next semester, but Strom did say that he would try to replicate its success next year.
"I hope it becomes an annual tradition," added Linton.
Viera's ordeal began around 3 p.m., when Adams, who was coincidentally walking by Hyde, noticed his assigned victim and hit him with a sock on his backpack. Viera's friend then told them that since Adams hit the backpack, the "kill" didn't count.
Viera, who lives on the fourth floor of Hyde, then sprinted south across campus, finally deciding on the safe zone of Thorne bathroom as his destination. Adams chased after him, though, and both players ended up in the bathroom.
"When you're in that situation, you don't know what to do think," said Viera. "You just run."
While waiting for Viera to come out of the bathroom, Adams e-mailed his roommates, telling them to help lure Viera out. Between 4 and 5 p.m., two of his roommates, Pope and Alger, arrived, but they couldn't coax Viera out of the safe zone.
Pope and Alger then went back to their room in Howard to pick up a Scrabble board, which they brought back to the Thorne bathroom to play with Adams while they waited. They soon moved into the hallway because the game was taking up too much space.
Viera then used a borrowed cell phone to call a friend in Hyde, telling her to get together everyone in Hyde to help him escape.
Shortly after 5 p.m., "about 25" of his friends arrived. The first-years created a human blockade outside the bathroom, enabling Viera to run away.
Adams and Pope chased after him, though; and with Adams blocking off Hyde, Viera was forced to look for a safe zone in Hawthorne-Longfellow Library.
"I ran him down like a panther," Pope told the Orient.
By 6 p.m., though, Viera, who had already made six "kills" himself, decided to give himself up, and walked out of the bathroom to let Adams hit him with his sock for his second "kill" (he now has three).
At dinner later that Tuesday night, Viera saw Strom at dinner, and asked him if his friend was right that his backpack had blocked Adams's attack. No, Strom told him, it didn't.
Viera's story wasn't the only exciting assassination. Early Wednesday morning, senior Mattie Cowan assassinated her victim, a fellow Coles Tower resident.
"There was a fire alarm at 4 a.m.," she said. "I actually forgot my sock, but I borrowed one [from a friend] and 'whapped' her."
Chris Head '11 said that her assassin came looking for her inside her dorm.
"Last week my roommates kept telling me that people were coming to the room asking for me," she said. "I didn't really connect the dots and thought I had a stalker."
Later in the week, Head came back from the library to her Maine Hall second floor residence, but her assassin and his friends were waiting for her. After a hallmate warned her of the danger, she ran out of the building, though that may not have been such a good idea.
"The chase lasted until I got to the other side of the Quad, where I was killed," she said. "Sprinting barefoot was a terrible decision because I broke my foot during Orientation at the House Olympics."