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.