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The incident

“Don’t tase me, bro!”

For some it’s become a punchline, for others, a battle cry.

The incident occurred here at the University of Florida on Monday when Senator John Kerry came to speak in a question-and-answer session. Briefly, here’s what happened: when the period for asking questions had just ended, a student named Andrew Meyer got up to the audience’s microphone and started asking questions. Kerry tried to answer them while Meyer kept asking more. Officials asked him to stop, but he insisted on having a chance to ask his questions. His microphone was cut off because he used the word “blowjob” (in refrence to Bill Clinton’s impeachment; Meyer was asking why Kerry hadn’t moved to impeach President Bush). Meyer was upset by his microphone being turned off. He was grabbed by UFPD officers, while Kerry told them that he wanted to answer Meyer’s questions. Meyer tried to escape the officers’ grip, but more of them (about six in all) seized him and pinned him to the ground as he cried for help. Kerry tried to calm the audience. The cops threatened to use a Taser on Meyer, and even though he asked to leave peacefully, they shot him with 50,000 volts of electricity and arrested him for inciting a riot. Kerry then answered some of Meyer’s questions for the audience.

The firestorm of controversy has become very divisive. Some believe that Meyer shouldn’t have disrupted the event by speaking out of turn and should have complied with officers’ orders to stop in the first place. Others believe that the amount of force used to subdue one unarmed person asking questions did not fit the offense, if there even was an offense at all. I side with the latter camp. I saw the video from one angle a few hours after the incident occurred, and it actually made me sick. I had a hard time sleeping that night, and I didn’t feel safe. I knew something had to be done. That’s when I found out about the protests.

It turns out I wasn’t the only one who felt that someone asking questions out of turn should be so violently punished. Yesterday, I joined about 200 other people on UF’s Plaza of the Americas in a march to UFPD headquarters. There we were told that two of the officers involved in the arrest were on paid leave pending an investigation. We asked for complaint forms to voice our concerns as students and members of the public. The police handed out five complaint forms, sparking an outcry from the crowd. They passed out some more, but there weren’t enough for everyone. From there, we decided to regroup at the Plaza of the Americas and then go to the Emerson Alumni Hall, where the president of the university would be giving a press conference. After protesting outside for several minutes, we apparently forced our way in through a side door and staged a sit-in. We were allowed to stay. The leader of the protest was allowed to address the media at the press conference. Meanwhile, the rest of us decided to work out our goals and long-term plans. When members of the press were leaving the press conference, we invited them to talk to us. Nobody asked me anything, though, because I was getting ready to leave. I had to take an exam, and I had already missed one class to be at this event. (Later, I saw video from the sit-in on CNN… well, YouTube, actually, but it was from CNN.)

Yes, I skipped class. It was a hard decision to make. It was a real moral dilemma. Should I be a good student or a good citizen? I e-mailed the professor whose class I missed asking what I missed, but it’s really only to see what he would say. I found out what I missed from two classmates. Meanwhile, the professor hasn’t e-mailed me back. Now I’m under the impression that he really hates me for missing his class. I plan on visiting him during his office hours and clearing the whole thing up. I hope he’ll understand.

At the sit-in, it was agreed that the group would meet in the Plaza of the Americas at noon the next day — today. It was raining, but there were still people there. After some discussion inside a “Free Speech Zone” marked with yellow police tape, we decided to go back to UFPD headquarters and ask for more complaint forms. The cops were very calm about it, and so were we. They gave us all the forms we needed (plus extras to give out to other people), and we filled them out. Apparently, if you’re making a complaint about an arrest, it helps to list some witnesses and their phone numbers. Someone suggested writing John Kerry as a witness, and someone else with an Internet connection on their phone found his phone number.

A reporter from the Gainesville Sun asked me what we aimed to achieve with these forms. I told her that we wanted, among other things, to ensure the reprimanding of more than two of the officers involved in the incident. The off-the-cuff remark about John Kerry being a witness made me realize that as a high-profile senator, he really could throw his weight behind this issue and give it the attention it deserves, so I told the reporter that that, to me, was another goal for the day. It’s not entirely far-fetched of an idea. Kerry had, in fact, issued a statement expressing his disappointment at UFPD for interrupting what he saw was “a healthy discussion.”

After that, the group decided to talk to Accent, the campus organization that hosted the John Kerry forum, about why they turned off Meyer’s microphone. A passerby noted that Accent really wasn’t all that bad and it wasn’t something worth getting too angry about. I forget exactly what he said, but I agreed overall; Accent was just as surprised as anyone by the police violence that occurred. So instead of going to Accent, we went to Turlington Plaza, which has actually in serious contexts been called a “free speech zone,” so we could inform others of the current situation and make plans to meet again. By now, the group had dwindled from 60 or so to about 20. As the rain picked up and the group broke up into several small groups talking about the incident with passersby, I figured that it was okay to leave. I was pretty tired.