University comes away shocked, burned

St. Petersburg Times: University comes away shocked, burned

The Web site of University of Florida student Andrew Meyer already displays links to the national coverage of his story (“made the front page of FoxNews.com”), suggesting he got at least some of what he wanted from his outburst at a campus forum with U.S. Sen. John Kerry. The university, by contrast, came out of the incident shocked and burned.

Meyer was doing a fine job of making a singular spectacle of himself Monday as he drilled Kerry with high-decibel non sequiturs. But that changed in less than 15 seconds, which was all the time it took before a young campus police officer drew a bead on him with her Taser gun. Before the dust had settled, five officers were holding Meyer down as one delivered a 50,000-volt shock. The episode was recorded by an array of student-owned digital video cameras, including one that Meyer had handed to a student before stepping to the microphone.

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