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“The devil was in the house and came out from my mouth,” a private school principal in Stone Mountain said after making what she and others termed racist comments at a graduation ceremony Friday night.
That was how Nancy Gordeuk tried to explain herself in a widely circulated apology letter to parents of students at TNT Academy.
The white school administrator provoked anger and drew broad attention after comments she made were recorded on video and passed on through social media.
“A terrible mistake on my part was part of the graduation ceremony on Friday night,” Gordeuk wrote. “I deeply apologize for my racist comment and hope that forgiveness (is) in your hearts. We all make mistakes and anyone who knows me realizes that I try my hardest to work with the students for them to obtain their goal of a high school diploma.”
Gordeuk wrote that, “I do not think I have discriminated against any family in the school. I just pray you will realize I am a human and make mistakes just like everyone else does and be willing to forgive and move forward instead of concentrating on the bad of the situation.”
Those in the audience and Gordeuk said she made the comments when she became frustrated and upset by people who took pictures of the ceremony while it was in progress, which she felt was a distraction and disrespectful.
She wrote in her email: “An unknown man at the beginning of a speech decided to walk up to the front of the audience with his tablet, videotaping the audience and the students causing disruption to the audience and disrespect to the ceremony and its participants. When disregarding the request to please sit down, the security was asked to remove the man. At that point, booing of the request commenced.
“Frustrated with the prospect of ruining the once-in-a-lifetime ceremony the graduates have worked so hard for, my emotions got the best of me and that is when I blurted out “you people are being so rude to not listen to this speech (valedictorian). It was my fault that we missed the speech in the program. I look to the left where the man was and all I saw was a mass of people leaving and I said, ‘Look who’s leaving, all the black people.’ At that point, members of the audience began to leave.”
She continued: “The facts are the rude booing from my perspective facing the audience condoning the actions of this man, are coming from the younger people in the audience. What if ten or twenty persons came and started videotaping the audience in the middle of a speech. Is that disrespect to the person trying to make his speech? Or does that mean everyone can just do as they please?”
In the video recording of the event, posted to social media, Gordeuk is heard telling the audience, “You people are being so rude to not listen to this speech. It was my fault that we missed it in the program. Look who’s leaving — all the black people.”
In response, some people in the audience yell out, and several black honors graduates appear to walk off the stage in protest.
Gordeuk told Channel 2 Action News that, “It’s just that’s where I looked … the man that came up front was black. I guess I was frustrated at him for interrupting this speech for this student.”
“It’s just very sad,” Jada Gibson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Gibson attended the ceremony to support her cousin, who was graduating. She said each of the school’s 48 graduates had to pay between $250 and $300 for the ceremony, which she said was marred throughout by Gordeuk’s comments — including, Gibson said, an aside about a crying baby that should have its mouth taped shut.
Another woman who said she was at the ceremony as a parent, Linda Haywood, posted to Facebook that, “It’s not all about her saying, ‘black people.’ During the entire ceremony she said rude and hateful things.”
But, she wrote, “… she introduced each black graduate with smart remarks such as the kid couldn’t make it in public school so they had to come to me.”
She added, “I am determine (sic) to make sure this school is shut down and she refunds all graduate parents for this horrible mockery of a graduation!”
On its website, TNT Academy says it started as a non-traditional educational center serving middle and high school students in independent study, but now offers “a traditional education pathway where classes are taught by a qualified teacher.” A high school diploma can be earned through credits from independent study and faculty instruction.
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