Thousands of Black college students expected this weekend for an annual spring bash at Georgia’s largest public beach will be greeted by dozens of extra police officers and barricades closing off neighborhood streets. While the beach will remain open, officials are blocking access to nearby parking.
Tybee Island, east of Savannah, has grappled with the April beach party known as Orange Crush since students at Savannah State University, a historically Black school, started it more than 30 years ago. Residents regularly groused about loud music, trash littering the sand and revelers urinating in yards.
Those complaints boiled over into fear and outrage a year ago when record crowds estimated at more than 100,000 people overwhelmed the 3-mile island. That left a small police force scrambling to handle a flood of emergency calls reporting gunfire, drug overdoses, traffic jams and fist fights.
I wasn’t a big partier, but I once went to Myrtle Beach because I had to see the ocean for my own sanity and even though it was an 11-hour drive, it was the closest coast I could get to. It wasn’t quite summer yet and it was after spring break, but it was still filled with rowdy college students getting drunk, puking and pissing everywhere, screaming from their cars which were blaring loud music, etc. That’s what they were doing when it wasn’t party time.
Thankfully, I stayed in the state park in a tent and didn’t have to deal with them much.