West Islip Students Charged with Trespassing Following Attempt to Expose School Security

Two West Islip journalism students have made national headlines after an attempt at exposing what they thought were holes in the school district's security system landed them in handcuffs.

Seniors Paula Pecorella and Nicholas Krauss, both on the staff of Paw Prints, decided to investigate school security, which they believed was lacking.

Pecorella detailed "flaws" in the school's swipe-card system in an editorial in the February edition of Paw Prints.

According to a report in The New York Times, two teenagers who Pecorella knew from church agreed to help in the reporting and successfully entered West Islip High School and "made laps" around the first and second floors without being identified in February.

The Times reports that the students initially planned to only enter West Islip High School, but adviser Tina Schaefer suggested they try it out at another nearby school and compare it to West Islip--a claim which Simon said Schaefer denies.

Days later, the students entered North Babylon High School, only to be stopped by guards who asked them to show identification. When they told security they had left the cards in their cars, they were instructed to leave the building and not to return without them, according to the unpublished story obtained by the Times.

However, Pecorella and Krauss did just that, by entering through a different doorway, which was opened by another student who had spotted them in the window. They planned to lap around the first and second floors, just as they did in West Islip.

They were immediately stopped by security and taken to the Dean's office, where school administrators contacted police.

Pecorella and Krauss were escorted Suffolk County police officers to the First Precinct station in separate cars, searched, photographed and confined to a table with other prisoners before being freed on $50 bail, the report states. They were charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail.

Deirdre Gilligan, a spokeswoman for the North Babylon schools, told The New York Times that school officials followed protocol by calling in the police when the students could not show proper identification and were found to be trespassing.

Following the ordeal, they wrote the article that night and submitted it for publication in Paw Prints. The article has not run.

According to Superintendent Richard Simon, West Islip Principal Dr. Anthony Bridgeman thought the article focused too much on North Babylon and "glorified" their being arrested, although he asked the students to re-write the piece.

Pecorella argues that in the Times report, 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.”

According to the report, Pecorella and Kruass stopped showing up to the journalism class amidst feelings of betrayal.

“I would say that their heart was in the right place, maybe, but they didn’t go about it in the best way," West Islip Superintendent Richard Simon told The New York Times.

Both Krauss and Pecorella accepted an "adjournment in contemplation of dismissal," which drops the charges as long as they are not arrested again within the next six months, according to the report.

Read the full report here.

This is a developing story. Patch will continue to update.