When you reach a certain level of wealth, a little switch seemingly gets turned off in your brain. The part of your mind that tells you: “Nah, I’m not really qualified for this,” is disabled and you become convinced that being filthy rich makes you an expert in everything. There are plenty of examples of “money brain” out there, but one of the more glaring is Kanye West. Ye, as West likes to be known, seems to think that his success in music and fashion makes him qualified to do everything from run for president to set up a school.
We all know how his presidential aspirations went, but we are only just discovering quite how bizarre the disgraced musician’s foray into education was. A few years ago, Ye opened a private school in Los Angeles called Yeezy Christian Academy, which became Donda Academy. The school, which cost $15,000 (£11,600) a year, was named after his late mother, Prof Donda West, and was highly secretive about its unorthodox approach.
Now, the school is the subject of two lawsuits and the allegations are coming fast. According to the lawsuits, filed by three former teachers and an ex-assistant principal, the school had no janitorial or medical staff and a bizarre list of rules. For example, students were served only sushi for lunch, which reportedly cost Ye $10,000 (£7,800) a week. The kids weren’t allowed to use forks and had to sit on the floor to eat because Ye “banished chairs in place of foam floor cushions”. Another alleged no-no at Donda Academy was stairs: there weren’t any classes on the second floor, because Ye is “afraid of stairs”. Colours were also prohibited: students had to wear all black; cups and bowls had to be grey. Windows were empty because the musician “doesn’t like glass”. Perhaps most disturbingly, the school doors were locked from the outside during the school day.
Ye and his lawyers, I should note, have said all these allegations should be dismissed and depictions of Donda Academy as a “dystopian institution designed to satisfy Ye’s idiosyncrasies” were false. Perhaps that is true. Still, it may be that there is a cohort of LA kids out there who never want to eat sushi again.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
