OMAHA, Neb.—University of Nebraska-Lincoln officials have banned the nationally popular student game of "Assassin," calling it inappropriate and potentially dangerous.
On Wednesday university police were called to an Oldfather Hall classroom by the report of a masked gunman. Armed officers arrived within two minutes and found a student in a ski mask, armed with a toy gun that shoots foam darts.
He was a player in the game sponsored by Neihardt Residence Center, a coed dormitory. The game is commonly called by its old name "Assassin" but has a new name at the dorm: "Live Free or Neihardt."
Smith Hall has a version of the game and calls it "Cupid's Rampage," said student Erin Wesely, who lives at the dorm.
In "Assassin," each player gets another's name as his or her target. The players then try to "assassinate" their targets by hitting them below the head with foam darts or paperclip "bullets" or some other benign projectile.
In some version of the game, water pistols are used. At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, the would-be assassins used socks.
The "killer" get the vanquished target's target and continue his or her bloodless trail to the final showdown against another player. In some games, the winner claims a pot of money.
Some student players said they were surprised the game caused such a stir, because the bright orange and yellow toy Nerf guns they preferred obviously were not real.
But Keith McGuffey, 20, said organizers could have done a better job of warning authorities about the game.
"We could have put up signs and notified police about what was going on," McGuffey said.
The university worries that the game could turn deadly.
"We want to make sure we don't have students running around campus with guns, even if they're plastic," said the vice chancellor for student affairs, Juan Franco, on Thursday.
In an e-mail announcing the ban that he sent to students Wednesday, Franco said the game was "extremely inappropriate in this day and age in which we are all too familiar with the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shootings."
"At this time, this game is at least disruptive, and could be dangerous if anyone misinterpreted a toy gun to be real," he said.
In April, a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., before turning a gun on himself. Earlier this month at Northern Illinois in DeKalb, a gunman fatally wounded five students before killing himself.
In the wake of those tragedies, college officials across the nation are taking few, if any, chances.
A report Thursday morning of a man carrying an assault rifle prompted police to shut down California State University, Dominguez Hills. A search of the sprawling Carson campus soon turned up an ROTC student who was practicing with a fake rifle.
On Wednesday, officials at St. Peter's College in Jersey City, N.J., locked down the campus for several hours after a note referring to the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois shootings was found on a wall in a campus building. A room-by-room search found nothing dangerous.
UNL Vice chancellor Franco said Thursday that he hasn't received any complaints yet about the decision to ban the games.
"We did talk to some students even last night and they understood," he said. "Obviously, they were just doing it for fun."
Violators of the ban could be disciplined, but he doesn't expect students to press the issue that far.
The ban includes the entire campus, including dorms and sanctioned fraternity and sorority houses.
Elizabeth Wakeman, 19, lives in Neihardt dorm and chose not to play "Assassin," said the game didn't disturb her or strike her as potentially dangerous.
"It was just kids with Nerf guns," she said.
Ryan Mulligan, of Urbana, Ill., runs sassins.com, a Web site dedicated to the game. The site helps groups organize their local games and lists suggested rules, including a recommendation to use only socks or spoons for weapons.
"That's the same as running down the quad with a football," said Mulligan, noting that even a Nerf gun can be mistaken for a real weapon at a quick glance.
Mulligan said his site was launched in October 2005 and, at last count, has hosted 1,800 players in three countries.
Despite the violence at some college campuses, Mulligan said he's not noticed a decline in participants other than a few games suspended in the Virginia Tech area last spring.
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Associated Press writers Timberly Ross in Omaha and Nate Jenkins in Lincoln, Neb., contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
UNL: http://www.unl.edu
Assassins: http://sassins.com/
