On my first day, a colleague showed me a room filled with desk chairs that were from the Fremont campus and said I could bring one at home if I wanted to (which I didn’t).
Also, a lot of cameras and computers were allegedly stolen by students or returned to Paris unusable when the campus closed.
There was absolutely rampant embezzlement of money by the French staff who came to initially start it.
It was the hubris from Paris that caused the school to fail (opening up a massive campus with no real plans to actually fill it up, tying grant money to enrollment numbers that were infeasible and leading them to take anyone) that caused the school to fail. If they had started slowly, and focused on quality 42 SV would have been great- a lot of good people were there.
As it was, I have no doubt that they were thrilled to use Covid as an excuse to close the branch without bad publicity. A lot of scandals at 42 if anyone cares to look.
Actually it would be funny if you were right because it would mean I’ve met these guys back in France.
Regarding the scandals, it’s true that there has been a lot of them back when 42 was managed by the former director of Epitech (he had sexual relations at school).
But with the new director (who joined in 2018), things seem to go pretty smoothly
(The picture in the middle of the article doesn’t require to understand french to be understood)