“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” These words apply as well to the student candidates running for office at GW in 1999 as they did to Sir Walter Scott in England in 1808.

Picture if you will a paid advertisement for a Student Association presidential candidate with a list of GW student group endorsements. And picture also if you will a line in the middle of that list of organizations that says “GW Democrats.”

A reader might well believe the GW College Democrats, with its membership of more than 500 students, had put its support behind candidate Phil Meisner.

However, as president of the GW College Democrats, I want to set the record straight. At our endorsement hearing last month, our members overwhelmingly chose to endorse Alexis Rice for president. So there should be no excuse for deceptively listing “GW Democrats” on a political campaign ad, when no such group exists.

This is only the latest in a frustrating web of deceptive ads intended to fool student voters.

Back in January, a Meisner ad ran in The GW Hatchet listing the endorsement of Habitat for Humanity. Habitat is a goodwill organization, which builds homes for the poor and has worked closely with GW College Democrats in the past. As it turns out, the non-political Habitat for Humanity organization never endorsed any candidates.

Equally as frustrating was a Meisner ad in the March 22 issue of The Hatchet sponsored and paid for by “GW Students for Peace in the Middle East.” As with Habitat for Humanity, Meisner’s supporters picked a group’s name that nobody could dislike. (After all, who could disagree with peace?) The problem is that “GW Students for Peace in the Middle East” is not even a student group on campus.

I am writing this letter because the record needs to be set straight.

-The writer is president of the GW College Democrats.