‘Monkey’ Texter Hopes to Avoid Serious Penalty

ABC News On Campus reporter Miles Doran blogs:  The man who confessed to accidentally sending a bizarre text-message to more than 40,000 students, faculty and staff at the University of Florida via the school’s emergency alert system says he is hoping to avoid jail time. Andrew Tatum (pictured at left), a former employee of Mobile Campus, the commercial provider of UF’s text-messaging system, could be charged under a state law that prohibits using someone else’s computer network without authorization, a third-degree felony. He worked for three years as the director of technology for Atlanta-based Mobile Campus, before leaving the company in October 2008. Tatum, a 24-year-old Gainesville resident, said with the exception of a speeding ticket, he hasn’t had any brushes with the law. "At the end of the day I just have to hope that they look back at my record and say he’s been a good guy," he said. “I just hope it’s not something that requires jail time,” he said. Tatum said he was with some friends last week, when he showed them he could still access the Mobile Campus system. He said he typed in a message and hit "next," expecting to be brought to a page asking if he really wanted to send the message. Instead, the message was immediately broadcast to more than 40,000 cell phones. The UF community received the message "The monkey got out of the cage" on Tuesday, Jan. 20. Some students thought the message, sent on Inauguration Day, had a racial undertone. UF junior Devon Grimme was watching a replay of the inauguration when he received the message on his phone. "I looked up and it clicked that they were probably talking about President Obama," he said. But Tatum said race had nothing to do with it. "I voted for Obama. I like Obama," Tatum said. "When I read that someone took it as being racist I was like ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ " "It’s just something I randomly pulled out, it had no racial innuendo," he added, referring to the recurring monkey who taunts a character in the animated television program Family Guy. University of Florida police traced the IP address to Tatum’s friend’s home. When the police arrived, Tatum was there and confessed. David Liniado, CEO of Mobile Campus, said, "No information was extracted from our system or could have been." He added this is the first incident of this kind the company has had since it was launched in 2005. Mobile Campus has about 10 employees, as well as representatives at some of the universities they serve. According to its Web site,  the company serves about 16 campuses across the country and has more than 150,000 cell phone numbers in its database. After the 2007 Virginia Tech University shooting spree, UF began requiring students to submit their cell phone numbers for emergency notification purposes. Many universities across the country also use text-messaging as a means for notifying students and staff of campus emergencies. Tatum hopes to return to UF in the summer to finish his degree in advertising. He is also searching for a new job. "I do realize that it’s going to be a little tougher now," he said. "I’ve been trusted with a lot of personal and company information and I understand that this one incident can break that trust, but I hope they can look back and say ‘well, everyone does something really stupid once.’ "