Orange cones, Orange Crush

College students from throughout the region flocked to Tybee Island over the weekend to celebrate the time-honored spring break festival first organized by Savannah State University in the 1980s.

After a day packed with musical entertainment and crowds of young adults socializing and swimming, all under the gaze of a heavy police presence, Tybee Island Mayor Brian West declared Orange Crush a success. 

So did Georgia Southern University students Kaylee Henderson, 18, Serenity Journey, 19; Kiya Brinson, 19; Destiny Coleman, 18; Mikaila Moses, 19; and Zoe Daniels, 19. The women arrived on Tybee to do what young adults do in that golden moment between midterms and final exams.

For Henderson, Orange Crush was “more like a second spring break.” The women said they definitely had not come looking for a love connection. But, Daniels added, “I’m open to it.”

The event, which has been happening since the 1980s, grew up a little this year. Originally an unofficial party for Savannah State University and other historically Black colleges and universities, Orange Crush has grown into the kind of raucous beach bash that Florida towns experience during Spring Break. The difference on Tybee is that local officials in past years have tried to curb the event, Georgia’s legislature has tried to quash it and previous organizers haven’t seemed to care about community relations.

In 2025, Tybee authorities worked with organizers to permit the festival from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and to require the group to clean up any trash on the public beach. For several years, volunteers have picked up trash as the festival ended. Students have been vocal about the discrepancies they see between the way locals treat the mostly Black event versus other beach events, like Irish Heritage Weekend or the Fourth of July, that the mostly-white island residents cherish.

This year’s Orange Crush stage was set up steps from a historical marker commemorating the Savannah Beach wade-Ins, which took place between between 1960 and 1963 and before before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 integrated public spaces nationwide. Eleven students were arrested for taking part in the effort to integrate Tybee’s white-only beach.

Ahead of this year’s festival, a a few vocal posters on Facebook warned that Orange Crush would bring an undesirable series of public sex acts, gunfights, and general rowdiness that would threaten young children, local businesses, and Christians wanting to spend Easter weekend at the beach or at Sunrise Sunday services at the pier.

Organizers, local police and residents worked to prove the naysayers wrong.

Half a dozen Georgia Department of Natural Resources officers on ATVs rolled in formation across the 12th Street boardwalk and onto the beach, where revelers spring breakers began gathering around 9:30 a.m.. As promoters set up the main stage, Butler Avenue was a sea of muscle cars, Slingshots, and the occasional pungent puff of blunt smoke.

Mark Lebos, a gym owner and surfer who grew up on Tybee, tried to play an unofficial role of community ambassador, spending Saturday helping partygoers to park without being ticketed or towed. He shrugged off his own fear of appearing like some bossy old white guy, and spent hours running down from his balcony, introducing himself and guiding revelers away from the yellow curbs and driveways, wishing them a good time.

Last year, Lebos said, kids were continually drag-racing on 12th Street. Police set up miles of barricades to keep cars from parking on Butler Ave and side streets in attempts to keep noise and traffic at a minimal level.  

Police appeared to be everywhere. The main drag was lined with barricades, orange safety cones, police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and state troopers posted along Highway 80 from the start of the causeway to the end of the road, just before the primarily residential South End and the notoriously deadly sandbar at Back River Beach. 

Starting Thursday, law enforcement started checkpoints along the road to Tybee looking for lawbreakers. 

Many of those heading to Orange Crush complained the efforts were annoying and disrespectful.

“They pulled us over for nothing,” complained Matthew Carlton, a white man who drove down with four Black friends from Chattanooga, Tenn. A State Trooper pulled Carlton’s car over without probable cause, he said: “We were going 35. He checked everybody’s ID for no reason.” While he said he didn’t get the trooper’s badge number, he didn’t get a ticket, either.

By midday, the party was in full swing. On Tybrisa Street, a few businesses closed Saturday, with signs in the window saying they would be back Monday, or that they had “gone to the beach.” T.S. Chu’s sold drinks from a walk-up counter at its front door. 

A few women sold food and drinks from folding beach wagons. One of them, Diedre Hart of Huntsville, Alabama, was doing a brisk business, selling hot dogs and cold soft drinks to passersby. Hart said she had come “to have some fun and to make a little money.” 

Willie Hooper, 35, a security guard who said his company, Zulu Security Enforcement, was hired to patrol Orange Crush, said his job was to keep the hundreds of people gathered near the main event area safe. From his perspective, the afternoon went off without drama, like any other warm spring day on Tybee.

Dozens of people waded into the waist-high surf, jumping and laughing when waves crested, broke, and rolled.

Masses of others stayed dry, and instead chatted and posed for the occasional photo near the sound stage. Others sat on the sand and watched the waves, while DJs played loud party music, And the general vibe was relaxed.

By 8 p.m., the time the Orange Crush permit expired, most revelers were heading off the island to after-party events. Georgia DNR officers quickly broke up a scuffle at the party’s end and organizers marshaled a small army of volunteers to clean up the beach.

Meanwhile, several blocks away, in a residential neighborhood on the other side of Butler Avenue, Tybee experienced the worst violence of the day, an incident that had nothing to do with the college-age crowds.

An argument between two brothers, longtime Tybee residents, spiraled out of control, and one fatally shot the other. 

When news broke, some social media mavens falsely attributed the incident to Orange Crush. Tybee Police, however, soon set the record straight. 

The next day, West said the event permit, the heightened law enforcement presence, and the promoter’s cleanup crew have put Orange Crush on the right track and the crowds are welcome again in 2026.