Student publishes album promoting rivalry

On Thursday, August 24, five original songs were a topic of conversation throughout the halls of Westside. Dubbed “Prep Weak,” by students of years’ past, the past few days have included not only daily themes leading up to the Friday night football game against historic rival Creighton Prep, but from senior Ian George, a mixtape as well.  

“It started back with Max Melcher,” George said. “He did it his freshman year and then continued on and made three of them. Then I decided to make one last year, and last year’s went really well, so over the summer I made five songs and I put them into a mixtape and then that’s FP5.”

The songs grew in popularity almost instantaneously after being posted on Thursday morning, crossing school borders throughout the metro and gaining steam on social media by the end of the day.

“When I took it down it had 2,000 views,” George said. “And the last one I had has 19.3 thousand.”

The songs were only up for a short time before George was called into the office by administration later that Thursday.  

“They called me up to the office, they were very angry with me and they told me about how it affects families, which I understand,” George said. “But my side of the story is that Prep kids have texted me saying they love the songs and are telling me to put it back up because they want to keep listening to it.”

Athletic director Tom Kerkman chose not comment.

“I just feel like the administration makes it into too big of a deal,” George said. “I think it’s kind [of] a violation of my freedom of speech, and I think that no one really takes it seriously besides the administration, like it’s all a joke.”

According to George, he was threatened with removal from the football team and suspension from all school sanctioned events unless the tracks were deleted, specifically the song on the mixtape F*** Prep V. Shortly after his meeting with administrators, George deleted the track from SoundCloud.

“Going forward, no, I will not put [the song] back up, but expect something in the spring,” George said.