Matt Watson is the opinion editor at The Reflector. He can be contacted at [email protected].An event that gained a lot of attention this week was the arrest of a University of Florida student who was charged with disturbing the peace and resisting arrest after querying Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in a question-and-answer session on Monday.
The student, Andrew Meyer, asked Kerry why he conceded the 2004 election, why he wasn’t for impeaching President Bush and, in light of these points, whether or not Kerry belonged in a secret society with Bush.
That took exactly 33 words to explain and about 10 seconds to read. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same thing about Meyer’s question.
After yelling into the microphone for more than a minute, police began to implore Meyer to finish. When he did not, they pulled him away as he fought back. Officers also used a Taser, an action that caught a lot of criticism from the public.
Another common criticism is that Meyer’s right to free speech was impeded. A group of students at the university protested the incident on Tuesday, lamenting the inhibition of free speech and the woes of police brutality.
“For a question to be met with arrest, not to mention physical violence, is completely unacceptable in the United States,” explained one of the protestors, according to a CNN report.
In America, we value freedom of expression and are often quick to defend it. However, I think we should be careful not to jump on a bandwagon of claiming the police discouraged free speech in this incident.
It’s hard for me to believe police officers subdued Meyer because they disagreed with his one-and-a-half-minute sermon. They began to escort him away because he had already barged in front of the line and was yelling incessantly.
Then he physically resisted the officers, prompting them to use the Taser. I’m not a law enforcement officer. Therefore, I don’t know correct procedure on using Tasers. But I don’t think it was brutal in the pure sense of the word, and the officers gave him many warnings before using it.
What happened to Meyer is not a matter of free speech. Many have turned it into one, in part because people love controversy. Free speech occurs when someone expresses ideas in a somewhat civilized manner. Free speech occurs when someone is marching, preaching on the Drill Field or even desecrating an American flag.
Free speech does not occur when someone enters a college hall and interrupts a public forum. It’s fine to ask any question at these types of events, but not by yelling and rambling. That’s one reason police officers are there in the first place.