Former Roger Williams Chairman Says He Used N-Word at Board Meeting
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The longtime chairman of the Roger Williams University board acknowledged yesterday he had used the N-word during a board meeting, saying it “kind of slipped out.”
“I apologized for that,” Ralph Papitto said in an interview on WPRO-AM. “What else can I do? Kill myself?”
Mr. Papitto, 80, who stepped down earlier this month after nearly 40 years on the board, said he had used the racial slur at a May meeting of the school’s board of trustees. He had been discussing the difficulty of finding minorities to serve on the 16-member board, which at the time included 14 white men and two women.
Barbara Roberts, then a board member, said Mr. Papitto became irate when he discussed pressures to make the board more diverse, at one point using the slur to refer to black candidates. Mr. Papitto has given the school at least $7 million, and his name is on the law school.
