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Tasered UF Student Explains Agenda

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The Associated Press

Published: November 2, 2007

MIAMI - The University of Florida student stunned by a police Taser and arrested after his fervent, videotaped outburst at an event with Sen. John Kerry said Thursday that he was only trying to raise "important issues that the media doesn't talk about."

Andrew Meyer, appearing on NBC's "Today Show," said he went to Kerry's appearance at the Gainesville campus on Sept. 17 to ask the "serious political questions that you saw me asking."

"My only agenda was to raise the important issues that the media doesn't talk about - the disenfranchisement of voters. When I talk about disenfranchisement, I'm talking about American voters not being allowed to vote and not having their votes count," Meyer told interviewer Matt Lauer.

Meyer, a 21-year-old journalism major, had come to the microphone as a question-and-answer session with Kerry was ending and demanded to know why the Massachusetts senator didn't challenge his 2004 loss to President Bush. He also asked why the president hasn't been impeached and whether he and Bush were members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University. Event organizers cut Meyer's microphone when he said former President Clinton was impeached for oral sex.

His yell of "Don't Tase me, bro!" as officers zapped him with a stun gun made the videotape of his arrest an Internet sensation.

Meyer said he brought a video camera to the speech not because he planned to cause a scene, but because he wanted to tape his questions and post Kerry's answers on his Web site.

He said he never thought he would "suddenly have a giant news story. This is a big surprise to me that I'm sitting here, to be honest."

Meyer and prosecutors reached a deal earlier this week where he won't be prosecuted for resisting an officer without violence and disrupting a school event if he doesn't violate the law and behaves appropriately for 18 months. He also wrote letters of apology to the school, its president and the campus police department for his outburst. Lauer questioned whether he wrote the letters simply to avoid prosecution.

"I wrote those letters of apology sincerely. There was rules in place. I did not follow the rules and that's my fault," Meyer said.

Meyer said he has no hard feelings toward the officers who zapped him, saying "they were doing their job." An investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement cleared the officers of wrongdoing.

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