“Trash, gangsters and greed”: High school students expose a corruption, mafia and illegal-dumping scheme

When Fred Isseks welcomed his students in 1991, he told them they were “the biggest news team in the Hudson Valley.” The teenagers were 16 to 18 years old, still learning journalism and attending high school, but they soon began investigating matters far beyond ordinary school assignments.

Middletown High School, in Orange County about 110 kilometers north of Manhattan, had bought video cameras that summer for audiovisual training and recreation. Isseks, an English teacher who had recently completed a master’s degree in media and communications, ran the course under the name “Electronic English.” He encouraged students to cover accessible local subjects, including school sports, amateur interviews and political debates with local representatives.

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You are the biggest news team in the Hudson Valley.

The class was built around more than camera skills. Isseks believed high school students were “an untapped natural resource,” and taught them how to search public records and file requests under the Freedom of Information Act. While other teenagers played soccer or went to the mall, his students conducted research. The New York Times later reported that they had managed to get ahead of local news organizations, even though some teachers initially treated the project as a game.

The investigation began with a casual comment from a friend who knew former landfill workers. What followed led the students toward one of the region’s largest scandals involving corruption, organized crime and illegal toxic waste. Their early classroom project became the reporting team Isseks had imagined, even if he had not expected that particular outcome when he first welcomed them.

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An untapped natural resource.