Tybee Island hopes new tools quiet Orange Crush weekend

Credit: Tybee Island Police Department/Facebook

Craig Nelson, The Current

Will this weekend mark the beginning of the end of Orange Crush on Tybee Island?

If some local officials and lawmakers have their way, it seems so, thanks to a law passed by the state legislature on March 5 and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp last week.

Local and state officials who were fed up with Orange Crush or never liked it in the first place couldn’t ban the annual rite of spring outright after last year’s traffic and management debacle. The island’s beach is public and therefore subject to state laws guaranteeing access to all.

So, critics and opponents of the event, which brings thousands of students and alumni from historically Black colleges and universities, as well as other Black teens and 20-somethings to Tybee, settled on another route in an attempt to get control of the event, if not force it off the island altogether. 

Along with Tybee Island officials, local government representatives and lawyers, state  lawmakers devised legislation that would use the threat of a lawsuit to ratchet up the pressure on the unofficial event’s fluid network of organizers and vendors to join a similar celebration in Jacksonville or move it elsewhere.

The effort, led by Ben Watson (R-Savannah) in the state Senate and Jesse Petrea (R-Savannah) in the state House, was successful. The measure signed into law last week by Kemp allows municipalities to sue the promoters of unpermitted events to recover the costs of additional security, traffic control, and medical and sanitation services.

City officials now appear to be on a legal collision course with Orange Crush promoters. Tybee Island Mayor Brian West didn’t reply to questions on Monday seeking information on the number of permits that have been issued by the city for Orange Crush-related events this weekend.

Quoting West, the Savannah Morning News reported last week that three different people had applied to the city for permits and all three had been rejected. 

Cassidi Kendrick, communication and outreach director for the City of Tybee Island, said on Monday that to her knowledge, there had been no additional requests for permits since then. She didn’t specify the grounds for the three rejected permits but said that in general, the permit applications must be complete and contain no discrepancies. 

When the legislation was introduced on the Senate floor in February, Watson insisted that the measure wasn’t targeting Orange Crush.

“It applies to all of the cities throughout the state and basically implies responsibility when it comes to promoters,” he said.

Volume of cars, emergency response

Last year’s edition of Orange Crush brought 31,643 cars to the island over the weekend, according to a recent series by Connect Savannah. In addition, 293 calls to 911 were made, as many island residents felt overwhelmed by the partiers on the island and feared what would happen in the event of an emergency, when the only way on or off the island was clogged with vehicles.

Local officials called last year’s event unprecedented and vowed changes in the city’s response for this year’s event. The Connect Savannah series revealed, however, that Orange Crush 2023 was not unprecedented in terms of car traffic. In fact, it was not even the most heavy traffic day of April 2023. Easter weekend brought more cars than Orange Crush last year, the outlet reported.

That wasn’t the case for emergency calls. There were only 60 during the weekend that followed last year’s Orange Crush, compared to the 293 that were made during the weekend of the celebration.

Clamor for change

Still, the clamor for government intervention was loud enough to grab the attention of local lawmakers.

Soon after the measure was introduced in both chambers of the legislature earlier this year, Derek Mallow, a co-sponsor along with Billy Hickman (R-Statesboro) and Mike Hodges (R-Brunswick) of the Senate version, said his goal wasn’t to force Orange Crush out of Tybee but to find a way for Orange Crush to exist and to ensure revelers were safe while guaranteeing the right of people to gather on the beach in Tybee.

“I think it’s a tool in the toolbox to tell promoters you need to work with us and you need to get a permit,” Mallow told The Current. 

Mallow himself went to Orange Crush when he was a student at Savannah State University. He said it’s important African-American college students have a space to have fun but also that people need to be kept safe.

Other supporters of the so-called nuisance bill have been more forthcoming about their intentions.

After saying that the bill was “for any municipality in Georgia,” West, Tybee’s mayor, told The Current, “My goal is to stop that activity from happening here. This is a vacation destination for families.”

Petrea, one of three co-sponsors along with Ron Stephens and Bill Hitchens of the House version of the Senate bill, was equally blunt.

“Because you’ve chosen to go a non-permitted route, because you’ve chosen to do it this way … we’re coming after you,” Petrea said, explaining the bill’s aim to The Current earlier this year.. “That’s the hope. That this will be a deterrent to these types of events.”

Any circuitous legal attempt to force Orange Crush from Tybee must, however, tread carefully.

Tybee officials are barred under a 2018 agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice from calling in outside law enforcement unless those reinforcements are summoned for other events, as well, after a group of citizens criticized the city for treating Orange Crush differently than the island’s Irish Heritage Parade and July 4th celebrations. 

While acknowledging all the issues that naturally stem from a small swathe of land like Tybee trying to accommodate a large number of people, one former mayor of Tybee said politics were best avoided when dealing with Orange Crush.

It’s that legal legacy that former Tybee mayor Shirley Sessions appeared to be referring to when she was asked at a community gathering in early March what advice she’d give to her successors. 

“Let the city manager, the police chief, the safety team, take care of everything,” she counseled. “As long as you do everything the same as they do for every other event, you’re good.”

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with The Current.