UF Taser Incident Frightening to a Fellow Florida College Student

If you haven't seen the chilling video of 21-year-old journalism student, Andrew Meyer, being dragged away by cops at John Kerry's forum at UF yesterday, do yourself a favor and check out YouTube. The video shows Meyer asking Kerry questions about why he conceded the day of the 2004 presidential elections instead of challenging the results and launching into a tirade about President Bush needing to be impeached before the US invades Iran. Meyer's microphone is turned off as the agreed-upon time of one minute per question has been exceeding, and soon after he begins to be forcefully led away by four police officers. Meyer's screams of protest can be heard throughout the rest of the video. He screams, "Is anyone watching this? ... Help, they're arresting me. What have I done? What did I do?" After this, his screams get more intense as police shock him with a Taser gun.

Regardless of whether it was right or wrong for Meyer to continue questioning after his allotted time was up, it's still a disturbing idea that such force was used to quell a student's disobedience. Conservative, liberal, or other, Meyer is above all else an American, bound by the same Bill of Rights as every other right-, left-, or middle-winged citizen of this country. Meyer never tried to incite others to action against Kerry or anyone else in that room; he did nothing but over-zealously question Kerry about issues that he felt are affecting the nation. Sure, his ranting and raving may have been annoying, but the fact still stands that all he was doing was asking a question. As officers dragged him away from the microphone at the UF speech, Meyer allegedly wasn't even read his Miranda rights before he was shocked with the Taser.

I'm not one to normally question authority, but I can't getting a little curious about this whole incident. This may not have gone as far as police brutality, but we can safely assume too much force was taken to quiet this kid. What alarms me most about this situation is the fact that I'm typing this only 2 and a half hours away from UF, wondering if anything like that is going to happen on my own college campus. What small action will it be next time that the police feel the need to step in a break up a "violent" protest? I understand that Meyer went over his time, I understand that he didn't comply as officers tried to escort him out, but I don't understand why he was treated like an armed criminal instead of the unarmed student he was. He's at UF for journalism, can we truly blame him for getting excited when asking a major political figure probably the most hard-hitting questions he had in his academic career?

All the while, Kerry stood by talking calmly as if nothing were happening. It's commendable that he tried answering Meyer's question, but more could and should have been done to stop this overly-aggressive act. This incident needs to be reviewed outside of the confines of politics, because analyzing this as Republicans and Democrats doesn't seem to be getting anyone anywhere. As message boards blow up from arguments about this sad incident, I can only hope that something good will come out of this, but I don't really see it happening. As charged as everything in politics is right now, it will probably just be lumped into another right versus left debate.

Meyer is now faced with two charges, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace. He has since been released due to no criminal history and due to the fact that he's a student. Last night after a friend at UF told me that a "little incident" had happened on campus, I didn't imagine it had been something this saddening. I had the misfortune of watching the video while eating my lunch, and I can honestly say I felt sick to my stomach. What country are we in when a 21-year-old has such a force exerted on him while he's doing what higher education and good citizenship encourages? When did attempting to understand what's going on around you become a criminal offense? And even with new technologies like video phones and YouTube, how many more incidents like this have to be broadcast worldwide over the internet for action to be taken against it?