UI senior Joannes Pool made the 20-hour trek to Boston on Sept. 30 to join Green Party supporters from across the nation in protesting the exclusion of Ralph Nader from tonight's presidential debates.

Pool will join an expected 1,000 participants in tonight's demonstration at the University of Massachusetts campus, the site of the presidential debate between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Nader and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan received 3 percent support (or less) in recent national polls -- short of the 15 percent mark required by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, the event's sponsor. These same polls, however, show that a third or more would like to see a four-way debate, with Buchanan and Nader joining Gore and Bush.

Protesters in Boston promise to raise a ruckus, with one group threatening to dump televisions into Boston Harbor.

"Protests in the United States and around the world have really been making a difference in the last year," Pool said in a phone interview from Boston. "I wanted to be a part of that difference, to be a part of something national and something that has an effect."

Officials have shut down the UMass campus and militarized it for the nationally televised debates, Pool said. The Secret Service asked the university to cancel its classes today, and they erected orange plastic fencing in the streets.

While neither Nader nor Buchanan plans to crash Tuesday night's event, both will make themselves available to reporters before, during and after to provide their analyses.

Pool's companion on the journey to Boston was Derek Moore, a first-year student in a Kansas City community college. Students from Ohio, Washington state and many East Coast states also traveled to Boston to join Nader supporters at the University of Massachusetts.

Monday night, Pool met with other activists from 4-9 p.m. to discuss the various options for the protest.

"One possibility mentioned was the creation of a national media spectacle," he said. "We would march to the front doors of the debate and stage a peaceful sit-down protest, demanding that Nader be let in."

Pool said he will have to consider whether getting arrested for his cause would be worthwhile.

"I'm not too concerned about having civil disobedience on my record," he said.

In Iowa City today, UI Students for Nader will hold a rally on the Pentacrest to coincide with the national protests.

Beginning at 12:20 p.m., local Nader supporters will speak on behalf of the Green Party candidate's key issues, including an increase in the federal minimum wage and ending the death penalty.

"We hope our message will reach as many people as possible," said Jeffrey Charis-Carlson, a UI graduate student and member of Students for Nader. "There are many people out there who are Nader supporters, but out of some kind of fear, they are voting for Gore."