Ralph Nader is a fighter.

For the fifth time, Nader is running in the presidential election. Tonight, the independent candidate will hold a rally at Kane Hall to address issues he believes the Democrats and Republicans have not thoroughly discussed.

Nader runs on a progressive platform. He wants to start a single-payer national health insurance plan in which all Americans are guaranteed medical care, he wants to defend American workers from corporate globalization and he is proposing a carbon tax to encourage less pollution and an expansion on solar energy technology.

“You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized, disrespected … and in that context, I have decided to run for president,” Nader said in his announcement for candidacy on Meet the Press.

I had a few minutes to ask Nader questions while he was in his car.

Emily Lee: College tuition has steadily been on the rise. According to a College Board report, there has been a 6.6 percent increase in tuition in the past year. This makes it more difficult for low-income students to receive higher education. What do you think can and should be done to address this issue?

Ralph Nader: Well, in public universities, it should be like in high school, apart from a few student fees. In Western Europe, for example, for decades there have been tuition trade universities. But we’ve got soldiers in Western Europe for the past 60 years still there. If we bring them back home, we’ll have more than enough money saved to get every student in our country free tuition to public universities, not private colleges. Students really have to raise their own expectations. Why does the United States, the richest nation in the world, burden these students with these huge debts which make them take jobs that they have to take, if they get them, in their 20s, that they really didn’t want to take? It makes them more risk-averse to be active citizens in the public arena around controversial issues. All that and more will be detailed tomorrow and is detailed on our Web site at www.votenader.org.

Emily Lee: As college students who will be the future leaders of the United States, how would you propose we take action to ensure change and progress?

Ralph Nader: Come to the rally [tonight] to defend our own interests. What are those? Well, when they get out of school they have problems getting affordable housing, which is difficult, and affordable health insurance, because our country is the only country in the Western world without full Medicare for all. And their jobs may be outsourced, through no fault of their own, to China and India, where the white collar … pull down trade agreements. They’re being gauged by student loans. Before they hardly toss aside their diplomas, they are in the middle of a declining economic system, a degrading political system and a dismantling of our democracy. And that’s what we’re going to talk about reversing. We have in our country a lot of problems that we don’t deserve and a lot of solutions on the shelf that aren’t applied. We still have to start to mobilize action to take back our country and to subordinate corporations to the sovereignty of the people.