She also made a statement to MyFoxAtlanta. An abridged version of her description of the incident:
QuoteTo address the incident at the graduation ceremony of May 8. Please keep the facts in perspective. 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.
Despite her attempts to rectify the situation, Gordeuk lost her job Thursday. Heidi Anderson, who chairs TNT Academy's board, wrote a letter to the Gwinnett County NAACP notifying the group of the decision:
In one of her post-incident interviews, Goreduk reasoned that the phrase "black people" isn't inherently racist. "I didn't know 'black people' was a racist term," she told NBC News. "I didn't say the N-word or anything like that because it's not in my vocabulary."
In another interview with Fox 5, Goreduk remained perplexed: "People just think the worst, you know? That, oh, you say the word 'black'—what was I supposed to say? 'African American'? Were they all born in Africa? No, they are Americans and they live here."
