“…Everyone knows it’s not a peaceful assembly,” Plymouth pushes to pacify Pirate Party

James Kelly

He/Him

Staff Writer

10/6/23

When Plymouth Police Department released a public service announcement earlier this week, reactions were mixed. Some students thought it was fake, while others called it a scare tactic. The PSA warned of a more aggressive response to this year’s Pirate Party, which will be held on Sunday, Oct. 8. “Participation in this event will not be tolerated,” it read. The PSA is part of a larger effort to reform Pirate Party, which in recent years has seen thousands of participants and dozens of hospitalizations. 

Pirate Party is an unsanctioned street party held the Sunday before Indigenous Peoples’ Day. 2022 saw an estimated 2,300 participants, and law enforcement anticipates a  similar turnout this year. The event, centered around off-campus housing on Russell, Winter, and Pleasant Streets, is controversial for its promotion of illegal activities. “It has become basically an underage drinking party,” said Deputy Chief Nathan Buffington.

The town of Plymouth started planning for this year’s Pirate Party in November 2022, right after Town Manager Scott Weden assumed office. Weden, who was the Emergency Management Director in Plymouth before he was Town Manager, “started conversations back in November last year… to try to move forward and create a unified plan to mitigate and address Pirate Party.” The result of that plan will be more aggressive policing and University-sponsored programming on Sunday.

PSU Student Life will host a “Sunday Fun Day” from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Mary Lyon Lawn. There will be a DJ, free food, and lawn games. The event aims to draw students off of Russell Street, which is currently the site of construction, and away from traffic. “Student Life’s priority is student safety, and that will be our primary focus throughout the weekend’s activities,” said Jessica Dutille, director of Community Impact and Student Life, in a statement to The Clock.

More than 20 students were sent to Speare Memorial Hospital as a result of last year’s Pirate Party, including some with injuries from thrown bottles and cans, according to Buffington. Weden hopes a sanctioned Mary Lyon Lawn event will limit hospitalizations and ease the pressure off Speare. “The hospital has to gear up and hire additional staff to cover this event… They hire additional ambulances to come in,” Weden said. “Let’s say the ambulance transports 20 people from the party to the hospital. There are five treatment rooms. Where are all these people going? In the midst of that, somebody comes in with a cardiac event, trauma from a motor vehicle accident… What then?” Weden believes hospitalizations can be avoided if Pirate Party is moved out of the street. “The goal of our weekend is to make sure nobody gets transported to the hospital. … We don’t want to arrest people. That’s the last thing we want to do. That takes time. That takes money.”

The Plymouth Police Department will work with other law enforcement agencies on Sunday, including the New Hampshire State Police and a Special Events Response Team, or SERT, which students sometimes conflate with SWAT. Additionally, Plymouth State University Police will work with officers from the University of New Hampshire. “You will see an increased law enforcement presence on campus,” PPD Chief Alexander Hutchins said. 

PPD is prepared for students to gather on Russell Street anyway, and they say they will respect the right to assemble. “You do have the right,” Hutchins said. “But when you associate Pirate Party with assembly, everyone knows it’s not peaceful assembly… You do have the right to assemble, but you do not have the right to cause havoc,” he said. “You can’t gather, you can’t block traffic… you can’t block any sidewalks, you can’t block any streetways.” They are prepared to make arrests, even if that isn’t their goal. “You’re going to see a lot more enforcement,” Hutchins said. “Year after year… we’ve seen more fights, we’ve seen more injuries, we’ve seen more property damage,” he said. “We’ve been more aggressive this year with saying, ‘Alright… this needs to change.’” According to Buffington, PPD will treat student and non-student Pirate Party participants the same way. 

Weden hopes this year will be a step in the right direction toward making Pirate Party a safer, community-wide event. Next year, Weden hopes “to create some type of event that’s welcoming not only to the university students but to the public,” he said. “It’s a matter of involving town departments, the university, the village district, and the businesses, to try to come together and figure something out to make it a healthier, safer event in the future.”