Fourteen students gathered outside Robinson Hall at 9 a.m. yesterday morning -- groggy but excited, carrying rolled poster board signs and ready to rally in Boston's Fleet Center for a political candidate with no chance of winning.
Approximately 12,000 people, mostly students, would join this Dartmouth contingent at the event later yesterday afternoon, not to support George W. Bush or Al Gore, but Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.
The fringe candidate has been drawing large crowds recently -- beating Bush's and Gore's numbers according to his campaign -- and attracting much of the support from college campuses just like Dartmouth's.
The aging environmental crusader who made his name in the 1970s as a raging consumer advocate has surprisingly generated much passion among his young legions three decades later.
But why support a candidate everyone knows is not going to win in November?
Anna Hrachovec '04 said she went to the rally to be close to political action. When questioned whether she would be voting for Nader in the elections in November, Anna shook her blue streaked hair in response.
"I'm a realist ... rational," she said. "I'll probably vote for Gore."
It is minds like Anna's that Nader's campaign is bent on changing.
Speakers, including major Nader supporters like talk show host Phil Donahue, civil right's activist Mel King, "A People's History of the United States" author Howard Zinn and filmmaker Michael Moore, in addition to Nader and running-mate Winona LaDuke, spoke under the banners of Boston Celtic championships and retired Bruins players.
One of the first speakers to take the stage was a student from the University of Massachusetts who bolstered the crowd. Before the next speaker was introduced the crowd began to chant, "Let Ralph debate," which would become an echo throughout the rally.
The crowd was there, it appeared, not only to support a candidate but to let America know there is a voice unrepresented by the major parties.
Speakers took the stage to voice their support of Nader and to deny the claim that voting for Nader was a bad political strategy for liberal reformers.
John Brett '00 was the first to refute the logic behind the statements that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.
"It's a bad argument," he said. "Fifty-five percent [of eligible voters] did not vote in the last election ... people who feel disenfranchised."
Those are the people Nader is pooling, he said.
"In fact, he is polling higher among N.H. Republicans than Democrats," Brett continued, citing a poll where he said Nader had nine percent support from N.H. Republicans and none from the Democrats.
Brett's disagreement with the criticism of the Green party candidate for drawing votes away from Al Gore that might prohibit the Vice President from carrying key states was echoed by many speakers, including Nader himself.
Pete Capetto, a union leader for the General Electric workers in Lynne, Mass. chose to put a new spin on the catch-phrase. He shouted, "A vote for Nader is a vote for ourselves" to the cheers of the crowd.
In his rallying speech to the crowd, Michael Moore noted that people often ask him why he would vote for Nader, when a vote for Nader meant a vote for Bush.
Moore said, "the equation should be changed -- a vote for Gore is a vote for Bush," echoing the sentiments among strong Green party supporters that the two major candidates were very similar in their political positions.
"The only wasted vote is a vote for more of the same," Moore said.
Moore cited an anecdote of a young man approaching Nader to tell him that he wanted to give Nader his vote, but he couldn't. Moore quoted Nader as saying, "Do you expect your Congressman or woman to vote his conscience on legislation?" To which the young man replied yes. "Then why do you expect less from yourself?"
Karsten Barde '04 is one of those young people who seems to expect from himself what the young man in the parable could not.
The central California native registered to vote last week just after he turned 18. He registered as a Green.
"My father was a big Nader supporter," he said.
Barde said that he and his dad used to argue, because Barde could not understand why his dad would not vote against Bush in the election by choosing Gore, until he looked up the Nader website himself and decided his father just might be right.
"It depends on whether you want to vote for political strategy or for conscience," he said.
David Peranteau '04 described himself as issue-oriented, and said he supported Nader because "he lines up well with where I am politically."
He cited the reasons for his support as being upset with the two-party system, stances on the death penalty and Nader's foreign policy of peacemaking instead of peace enforcing.
The freshman particularly took issue with the current state of campaign finance in politics. "Corporations shouldn't tell candidates what positions they should take."
Despite the support of these students and others of the 12,000 that filled the Garden yesterday afternoon, Nader will not be involved in the debate taking place the day after tomorrow in the same city.
Barde noted that he felt that every intelligent person should be given the opportunity to speak.
Several speakers, and certainly the body rallying in support of the Green party candidate, echoed Barde's opinion that Nader should be allowed to debate. One even cited statistics of a recent poll, which put Nader at five percent of the American vote.
Nader noted that Governor Jesse Ventura, running as a third party candidate in Minnesota, had only 8 percent of the vote before the debates. He ended up winning the election in a three-way race with 38 percent of the vote.
Rally or not, the real news will be made inside the auditorium tomorrow night, and Nader's chances of being there are slim.
