Imagine if your history books read like this: "In 1865, John Wilkes Booth 'bulls-eyed' President Abraham Lincoln."We all know that Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln. As our textbooks find no reason to shy away from saying it, we shouldn't either.

But the organizers of "tri-quad bullseye," a game taking place this month between Ziv, Village and Ridgewood residents, chose to avoid the term at all costs. This is a classic example of people putting too much thought into a situation that needs no analysis.

"Assassin" is the widely accepted name for the aforementioned game. Participants are given another player to eliminate-by shooting him or her with a water gun-until only one person remains.

The group that organized "tri-quad bullseye" in these quads, however, determined that "assassin" was not an appropriate name this time around.

The decision to change the name of this game was a tremendous cop-out, but there are several ridiculous reasons that one could use to justify such a choice, among them a desire to avoid using a word with violent connotations and to be politically correct.

Senator for the Class of 2008 Michael Goldman, who was on the committee that planned tri-quad bullseye, expressed his displeasure with the decision to change the game's name in favor of political correctness.

"We are being overly politically correct and taking ourselves too seriously when we do things like this," Goldman said.

But political correctness isn't an issue: There is nothing offensive about the word "assassin." Rather, it is simply a way to describe a politically significant murder, and has no offensive connotations. After all, the word is not edited out of our history books.

While the word "assassin" certainly has violent connotations, that is not a concern in the context of this situation. If we were talking about five-year-olds playing this game, there would be a motivation to avoid using a violent term and instilling a dangerous value. After all, young children are very impressionable.

College students, however, are creatures of higher intuition, and I hope they have the capacity to understand that calling a game assassin and shooting people with water guns doesn't mean that killing is O.K. (We have Brandeis educations, after all). And, by the way, even young children read history books with the word "assassin" written inside.

The real issue at hand is a gross misunderstanding of why this game is played in the first place.

Village Quad Director Lucas Malo argued against calling the game "assassin" during the planning of the event because he said the game is an opportunity to build community at Brandeis. Julie Aronowitz '07, a member of the Village Quad Council who sided with Malo during the decision-making process, had even more idealistic goals.

"If I eliminate you in this game, it is not like I am 'killing you,' but rather, I am getting to know you," Malo said.

"Using a different name than 'assassin' here is acknowledging that we want to create a different cultural norm," Aronowitz said. "This is an opportunity to create a more positive spin around a negative term."

Both are missing the point: Students don't play assassin to meet new friends or create new cultural standards. The point of participating is purely to have fun, which is the primary objective of playing any game.

Assassin is also the widely accepted name for this game. Only at Brandeis do we feel the need to overanalyze the situation and look into reframing the contest. Everyone understands that this is good, clean fun, and we don't need to be spin doctors.

It's about time that we stop injecting broader cultural and educational meanings into simple things on this campus. Assassin is just a game. Let's sit back, relax and enjoy the fun without putting much thought to it.