Former third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader decried the lack of civic engagement among young people at Columbia on Monday afternoon.

Nader's speech served as a kick-off event to Voting Week, an annual campus event—now entering its third year—that looks to promote civic and political participation on campus and register students to vote.

"People say we're a nation of sheep. Are you kidding? Sheep are far more rebellious," Nader, who ran on the Green Party ticket during the narrowly contested 2000 election, said. "We need you to get serious. We need you to have a high estimate of your own significance as citizens."

Insisting that he would not pander to a crowd of college students, Nader said that his time studying at Princeton University and the "high-priced tool factory" of Harvard Law School demonstrated that schools of all kinds fail to teach their students how to participate in political life.

Asking audience members if they had ever read the fine print in contracts or knew how to file Freedom of Information Act requests, Nader argued that young people do not actively engage in these citizenship activities because of a system of "power-fact deprivation."

"If you don't have time for your civic duties, goodbye democracy. Goodbye justice," he said. "If you don't show up, forget about your future. No one's going to substitute for that civic function."

Likewise, he also went after the media—from campus newspapers to cable TV—for failing to thoroughly scrutinize those in power and provide information that can make readers and viewers better citizens.

Despite his cynicism regarding civic education, Nader also maintained that even a small number of civically engaged individuals can, in fact, make a change.

Nader said that, while fighting for safety standards in the coal and auto industries, he learned only one percent of the population needs to speak up in order to pressure Congress into action.

"How do you think we took on these big companies? You take them on with knowledge, with civic energy, and you ask good questions," he said. "The struggle throughout history is between commercial values and civic values."

In line with his own actions and the focus of his new book, "Breaking Through Power," he called on students to hold both University administrators and local elected officials accountable.

While Nader did not focus on electoral politics during his initial speech, a question-and-answer session immediately afterward often turned tense, as audience members pressed Nader on third-party candidates and their potential to change electoral results—which some say he did in 2000.

After a question from Diego Duhrssen, CC '18, about how voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein could lead to a victory for Donald Trump, Nader pushed back by pointing to injustices and faults in the 2000 election that he claimed led to a Bush victory over Gore.

"We're either all spoilers of one another, or none of us are spoilers," Nader said. "'Spoilers' is a bigoted word. It is designed to oppress and marginalize and harass third-party candidates who are exercising their First Amendment rights."

While neither Stein nor Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received the necessary support in national polls to appear in the presidential debates, Nader suggested that the two major parties—which he said control the for-profit Commission on Presidential Debates—had a vested interest in keeping third-party candidates out of these nationally broadcasted events.

"You don't go deep into the details, and you don't escape from this cul-de-sac that they have us trapped in," Nader said.

Voting Week, which begins Oct. 3, will continue to highlight the role of third-party candidates, as Libertarian Larry Sharpe and Michael O'Neil of the Green Party speak on the war on terror and voting rights, respectively.

For his part, Nader challenged audience members to show up to events next month and to the polls in November.

"If we have low expectations of young people like you, you will oblige us. If we have high expectations, you'll surprise us," he said. "There's never an excuse not to vote your conscience."

teo.armus@columbiaspectator.com | @teoarmus