Bartlet's Third State of the Union
Bartlet and the staff revise his State of the Union speech, and add subtle points, such as support for school uniforms (1) indicating that Bartlet will run for a second term. Josh tries to find out how the speech goes over with certain key districts in order to know how proposed gun-control legislation will go. A police officer who Bartlet points to as a hero during the speech turns out to have an excessive-force complaint on his record from years earlier. Five Drug Enforcement Agency officials are taken hostage by a Colombian drug cartel (2).
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School uniforms (last updated July 2001) (back to top)
School uniforms became a national issue in 1996 with President Clinton's State of the Union address. In that speech, he singled out the Long Beach school district in southern California, which had released statistics showing that its mandatory uniform policy had not only reduced vandalism and fighting but also improved test scores.
The first public school system to require uniforms in all elementary and middle schools, the Long Beach district implemented its program in 1994. Students were allowed to opt out of the program with parental consent, but the district reported that less than 1 percent of students did so. The program affected about 60,000 students, and the school trumpeted success when it found that overall school crime dropped by 36 percent over the next year. Such a statistic, based just on comparing two years and without controlling for other factors, carries little weight but captured something in the public imagination.
A handful of individual schools adopted some form of program in the mid-1990s, but uniforms have gained new ground in recent years.
In September 2000, Philadelphia's public school district implemented a mandatory policy, becoming the first big-city district to do so.
Other major cities have less strict programs that individual schools can opt out of. The New York City Board of Education, for example, implemented a uniform program for elementary students beginning in September 1999. Schools are permitted to opt out of the mandate if a majority of parents oppose uniforms, and no discipline against individual students is allowed except for reprimands or parent conferences.
Legal challenges have been relatively rare in this area, probably because policies are written to allow for voluntary opt-outs and generally focus on younger, pre-teenage students who are less likely to have a particular interest in what clothes they wear and the resources or mindset to go to court. Local chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union have been involved with lawsuits against particular policies and have resulted in changes to some policies. The Supreme Court has never recognized a general interest in all people having a right to wear whatever they want to, though it would probably declare a particularly rigid and restrictive policy unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
Colombia (last updated July 13, 2001) (back to top)
Colombia is the center of the international cocaine trade, a dubious distinction that has survived governmental opposition for years and has also fed unrest domestically.
More than 90 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States is produced, processed or transshipped in Colombia. Drug traffickers grow cocaine locally (an estimated 136,200 hectares were under cultivation in 2000) and also import cocaine base from Peru and Bolivia, refine the base into cocaine hydrochloride, which is then exported.
Colombia's cartels are some of the most sophisticated criminal organizations in the world. Inside Colombia, the cartels pay guerrilla groups (in particular the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN)) to protect their crops and refining facilities. The cartels then work with Mexican and Dominican groups to bring cocaine into the United States (Mexican groups started off simply as transport but were increasingly paid in cocaine and are becoming major traffickers themselves, now dominating the West Coast and Midwest). Inside the United States, Colombian traffickers are organized as "cells" covering geographic areas.
Government efforts through the Colombian National Police and army divisions have hurt these organizations in recent years, effectively dismantling the Medellin cartel that dominated the trade in the 1970s and the Cali cartel that dominated in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Medellin drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was killed during a shootout with the CNP in 1993, and major Cali leaders were arrested or killed in 1995 and 1996). But cartels have adapted and new ones continually rise to power. Even traffickers who are arrested manage to retain their power; several have been given light sentences and continue to run their operations from prison.
Colombia's current president, Andres Pastrana, was sworn into office in August 1998; he has vowed to end Colombia's long-running civil conflict and to cooperate with the United States in combating the illegal drug trade. In 1999, the Pastrana administration unveiled its "Plan Colombia," a multifaceted approach to dealing with the country's problems. It not only fights the drug cartels but also aims to improve the economy, improve the country's human rights situation, and strengthen democratic institutions. Colombia plans to finance $4 billion of the estimated $7.5 billion cost, and the United States approved a $1.3 billion assistance package in July 2000.
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By Stephen Lee
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