RECENT POSTS
- Formerly Homeless Teenager Hosts Thanksgiving Dinner at Community Center
- Colleges Turn to Gmail, Outside Providers, for Campus E-mail Accounts
- Boyfriend and Girlfriend Chosen as Rhodes Scholars
- Voting Underway for Next Location Mapped on Google Street View
- New Software Facilitates H1N1 Vaccine Distribution in Arizona
- Bowling Champ Says Asperger's Helps Concentration
- In First Person: Remembering the Lives Lost in Pam Am Flight 103
- Chinese Students' Hopes for Obama's Visit to China
- Student Wins People’s Choice Awards Design Contest
- Nothin' But Net: Netball Sweeps Across America
MONTHLY ARCHIVES
« Previous | Main | Next »
"Don't Tase Me Bro!": One Year Later
September 17, 2008 3:22 PM
ABC News On Campus reporter Miles Doran blogs:
It's a special day at the University of Florida.
One year ago today, telecommunications student Andrew Meyer yelped that infamous phrase as he was tasered at a campus town hall meeting held by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). The event was sponsored by ACCENT, the student government-run speakers bureau.
I was at the University Auditorium on that Monday morning covering Kerry's speech for WRUF, the campus news radio station. I was sitting a few rows in front of Meyer when he began interrupting Kerry with long-winded questions about his involvement in Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale. When event organizers cut his microphone, things got crazy. I turned on my digital camera and started rolling. When Meyer didn't cooperate with police officers, he was tasered.
"Don't Tase Me Bro!" went on to become an internet sensation, with ringtones, remixes, games, and T-shirts. It was also picked as 2007's Quote of the Year by the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations.
But if it weren't for a front-page story in today's University of Florida campus newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator, many students say they would not have remembered the anniversary.
"Yeah it's something we talk about every once in a while, but it wasn't something that memorable that we remember it to the day," said one student.
Andrew Meyer has since graduated and has been laying low. As of this blog posting he has not returned calls from our campus TV station (although he was recently spotted by a friend of mine at a local bagel shop -- they chatted for awhile).
These days when ACCENT holds events, they kindly remind audience members to be respectful to both fellow audience members and the speaker.
ACCENT chairman Andrew Guglielmo says perhaps one day they'll invite Meyer to speak.
"Maybe if he became a little more recognized nationally," he said.
That is, for something more than a yelp.
September 17, 2008 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (7)
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
"lying" low. He should have been expelled. And I hope he ends up in a fast food restaurant where he belongs.
Posted by: John Kantor | Sep 17, 2008 4:10:22 PM
To John - Go and read Matthew Ch 5 V 29-30.
Andrew should be a spokesman for civil rights. Those cop(s) should have been arrested. A taser is deadly force, plain and simple. You don't use deadly force against the first amendment. At no time did Andrew present himself as a danger to others.
God help us all.
Posted by: Max | Sep 17, 2008 4:16:02 PM
A fast food restaurant? Come on, be for real. He was young, got alittle overenthusiastic and interupted a public speaker. Since when does that warrant a lifetime curse.
Posted by: Rick | Sep 17, 2008 4:21:00 PM
Who cares what this person said? I thought coverage of it was empty then, and even more so now.
Posted by: Lisa Again | Sep 17, 2008 5:21:16 PM
When this happened I laughed cause he got what he deserved.
And they bring it up today and I laughed again. :D
Posted by: Beth | Sep 17, 2008 5:53:41 PM
It's a definite sign of the times that the First Amendment rights of the citizens of this country are being eroded and swept under the rug. Especially by the PC crowd (off the subject, now) who wish to utterly silence the Christian right. Wake up America! The idiot governor of Californication makes it illegal to utter the "words man and wife" or "mother and father" in public schools, makes it illegal to homeschool your children (kind of like Germany, so that they can indoctrinate them into the established way of thinking of homophiles) and we all sit back and accept this eroding of our rights given to us by the blood of countless Americans and patriots? I DON'T THINK SO!!!!
Posted by: bylypop | Sep 17, 2008 5:55:34 PM
I was disturbed by how desperate and EAGER the... whatever they are... with the tasers... were to inflict a lot of pain on another human being. I mean, I think that chick torturer had a a hard-on even though that's not physically possible!
Takes a special kind of sicko to want to torture people for no reason (didn't Kerry even say he was going to answer the guy's question and there wasn't even a problem??!).
I left the U.S. for reasons like this... I shouldn't have to fear I'll be tased to death for opening my mouth.
Posted by: Covin | Sep 17, 2008 6:26:53 PM
Post a comment
