When two student journalists from Paw Prints, the newspaper of West Islip High School, set out to investigate school security, they thought they might do some good, maybe win the award for story of the year in the Long Island Press high school journalism contest. Instead, the article was quashed, and they wound up with a grown-up lesson in the consequences of testing nerves in a post-Newtown-massacre world.
Court proceedings against the students, Paula Pecorella and Nicholas Krauss, finally ended last week. But there are still bruised feelings and recriminations all around.
“I certainly hope that high school kids get an opportunity to engage in the real-world issues, and part of our job is to help them do that in an appropriate and responsible way,” said Richard A. Simon, the West Islip schools superintendent. “I would say that their heart was in the right place, maybe, but they didn’t go about it in the best way.”
Though the Newtown school shooting was in the back of their minds, the two students said their inspiration was what they saw as the folly of the $10 swipe cards offered to West Islip seniors as a way to gain access to the school via the back doors. As a February editorial in Paw Prints put it, “Why are students being presented the alternative of using the unlocked main entrance?”
Physical security at West Islip was spotty, the budding reporters believed: the main entrance was effectively wide-open; the back doors had locks, but students could prop them open with sticks or stones; surveillance cameras were antiquated; and the few guards assigned to patrol the perimeter — to make sure students were not cutting class — sometimes simply waved from their cars.
“It’s harder to get out of the building than it is to get in,” said Ms. Pecorella, 17, the managing editor of Paw Prints.
On Feb. 22, two teenagers Ms. Pecorella knew from church who were not students at the school pitched in with the reporting. They succeeded in entering West Islip High School, making laps around the first and second floors and exiting.
What occurred next, and who precipitated it, is at the heart of the continuing quarrel.
The students said they initially envisioned their article solely as an analysis of West Islip. Mr. Krauss, the paper’s features editor, said it was their adviser, Tina Schaefer, who “recommended to us that we should take the project to another school.” They picked North Babylon High School, which was rumored to have fortresslike defenses.
Ms. Schaefer did not return phone calls. The superintendent, however, said Ms. Schaefer “categorically says it was not the case” that she made such a suggestion. “And I absolutely believe her,” he said.
Either way, on Feb. 26, Ms. Pecorella and Mr. Krauss drove to North Babylon High School. According to a copy of the unpublished article provided by Ms. Pecorella, this is what happened:
“First, we entered through a set of doors toward the north end of the high school. Upon entering the building, we were immediately intercepted by clearly marked security guards wearing bright orange jackets, who asked for our school identification cards. After a quick excuse that our cards were left in the car, we were escorted back out the doors and were instructed not to re-enter without our cards.”
But re-enter they did.
“When we located a door not protected by security, we were sighted by a passing student who opened the door for us,” their account continued. “Upon entering the building, the next step was to make a full lap around the school as our first subjects had done in West Islip.”
Within moments, the students were stopped by a security guard and taken to the dean’s office, where, Ms. Pecorella said in an interview, the principal told them they “would see the full extent of the security at the school.”
The two were taken by Suffolk County police officers to the First Precinct station in separate cars, searched, photographed and shackled to a table with other prisoners before being freed on $50 bail. They were charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail.
That night, they wrote their article together via Skype. But it never ran.
According to Superintendent Simon, the principal of West Islip, Anthony Bridgeman, said the article was too focused on North Babylon. It also “kind of glorified their being arrested,” Mr. Simon said. He added that Dr. Bridgeman offered the students a chance to recast their article, but that they stopped going to journalism class and did not return text messages from the editor in chief of Paw Prints.
Ms. Pecorella disputed that, saying Dr. Bridgeman “absolutely did not want us to print anything about the topic of security; he was not willing to work with us to change the story.” Mr. Krauss conceded that they had mentally checked out of journalism class, amid feelings of betrayal.
The two students also said they deserved credit for exposing poor security at the school.
Last week, a reporter for The New York Times and a photographer carrying a bag of camera equipment were able to walk to the principal’s office without being stopped.
Mr. Simon said security would be reinforced beginning in the fall, but added that plans to do so had been under way since the Newtown shooting, and not because of the students’ article.
Mr. Krauss, who is headed to Suffolk County Community College, said he had soured on journalism as a possible career and would study international relations. Ms. Pecorella, who won 10 journalism awards this year and is headed to SUNY-Cortland, said the experience had ignited in her an even fiercer fire for the craft.
Both acknowledged the holes in their effort: not seeking interviews with West Islip school officials, misrepresenting themselves to the first guard at North Babylon and then pressing on to enter the school.
“There’s a million things we could have done to prevent what happened,” Ms. Pecorella said. “But at the time, we wanted to get to the next part of our experiment, and so we did what it took.”
Deirdre Gilligan, a spokeswoman for the North Babylon school system, said school officials followed protocol in calling in the police when the students could not show proper identification and were found to be trespassing.
“Just because they say they are working on a story for the newspaper, why is the school district supposed to take their word for it?” Ms. Gilligan said. “God forbid they were there for something else.”
Ultimately, she said, “the district decided that they did not want to go ahead and press the charges.”
So, in court on May 24, Mr. Krauss accepted an “adjournment in contemplation of dismissal,” meaning “the charges will be dismissed if there are no rearrests within six months,” said Rita Bonicelli, his lawyer. On June 6, Ms. Pecorella got the same result after a prosecutor told the judge it was offered, in part, because of “the very bright future that she does have before her.”
Source- New York Times