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Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Law - Not the kind of publicity a law school wants
Fort Wayne Observed has posted this entry about "the 80-year old chairman of a university in Rhode Island who admitted to using the "N-word" in a board meeting."
The Providence RI Journal reports in a long story today:
Pressured by students and faculty, the Roger Williams University Board of Trustees is considering whether to remove Ralph R. Papitto’s name from Rhode Island’s only law school because he used a racial epithet during a May meeting of the trustees.Meanwhile, Papitto, 80, took to talk radio yesterday to acknowledge that he used the slur while discussing the need to add more women and minorities to the board.
“It just slipped out,” Papitto told WPRO-630 AM talk show host John DePetro. “I never even knew I said it.”
A group of 75 law students signed a petition within two hours yesterday, demanding university officials immediately change the name of the Ralph R. Papitto School of Law. Their campaign was sparked by a report in The Journal Saturday that the former chairman of the board of trustees used the “n-word” during the board meeting and then worked behind the scenes for two months to remove three board members who criticized his conduct and demanded he resign. A university spokeswoman said some faculty members were also calling for Papitto’s name to be removed from the law school. * * *
Papitto’s use of the “n-word” came to light last week when three trustees said they were wrongfully removed from the board after calling for Papitto to resign. The three are Dr. Barbara H. Roberts, Papitto’s former cardiologist; Joseph A. Caramadre, a philanthropist and owner of Estate Planning Resources and Sally E. Lapides, owner of Residential Properties. * * *
Eleven years ago, when the Board of Trustees voted to honor Papitto by naming the law school after him, several students voiced their disapproval of the plan, in part because Papitto was not a lawyer, in part because he had had a civil dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission when he ran Nortek, and in part, because he was still living.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a law school named after a living person because they might do something wrong before they die,” said Bill Felix, a law school student from Pittsburgh said in 1996. “They could kill their family the next day and that would be on my law degree.”
Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 17, 2007 02:11 PM
Posted to General Law Related