Whil Piavis (Mechanical Engineering '07), aka "The Pirate Captain," made international headlines when he and his "Scurvy Crew" hijacked the 2005 student body presidential election. Ironically, he is now a cybersecurity expert
8-min. read
Ah, the spring of 2005, when the captain and his five-member "Scurvy Crew" raided campus and pillaged student government with their creative low-budget campaign to anonymously steal a position few students knew they were interested in until the election and runoff started getting local, national and international attention.
He and his friends made a YouTube campaign video that ended with, "I be The Pirate Captain, and I approved this message." They launched a website and shared their platform and planks on a new social media platform called Facebook, which kept deactivating the page because of its anonymous email. They recreated it dozens of times, and one version still exists.
Paul Piavis, an original member of the Scurvy Crew, received an appointment to and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, making him perhaps the only commissioned officer pirate in Navy history.
https://news.ncsu.edu/2024/09/a-pirate-captain-looks-at-forty/
8-min. read
Ah, the spring of 2005, when the captain and his five-member "Scurvy Crew" raided campus and pillaged student government with their creative low-budget campaign to anonymously steal a position few students knew they were interested in until the election and runoff started getting local, national and international attention.
He and his friends made a YouTube campaign video that ended with, "I be The Pirate Captain, and I approved this message." They launched a website and shared their platform and planks on a new social media platform called Facebook, which kept deactivating the page because of its anonymous email. They recreated it dozens of times, and one version still exists.
Paul Piavis, an original member of the Scurvy Crew, received an appointment to and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, making him perhaps the only commissioned officer pirate in Navy history.
https://news.ncsu.edu/2024/09/a-pirate-captain-looks-at-forty/