PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The former longtime chairman of the Roger Williams University board admitted Monday to using a racial epithet to refer to blacks 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?”

Papitto, 80, admitted he made the comment at a private board meeting in May. Since then, three board members who demanded his removal were ousted, and Papitto himself stepped down after nearly 40 years on the board. On Monday, two of the departed board members and some students said his name should be removed from the Ralph R. Papitto School of Law, Rhode Island’s only law school.

Papitto, who has given more than $7 million to the university, said he used the n-word while discussing the difficulty of finding blacks and other minorities to serve on the 16-member board of the Bristol-based university, which at the time included 14 white men, two women and no minorities.

Barbara Roberts, one of the ousted board members, said Papitto become irate when he discussed pressures to make the board more diverse, at one point calling black candidates to the board the epithet.

She said he then told the board he knew he couldn’t say that because of Don Imus, the radio host who was fired after referring to Rutgers University women’s basketball team members as “nappy-headed hos.”

“There was, like, this complete and utter silence, and I was shocked beyond belief and very angry,” Roberts said.

Papitto said he never used the term before.

“The first time I heard it was on television and then rap music or something,” he told WPRO.

Although Papitto said the decision to retire was based on his age and his desire to spend more time with his family, board spokesman Mike Doyle said his departure was hastened by the comment. A man who answered the phone at Papitto’s home hung up on an Associated Press reporter Monday.

The school’s president, Roy Nirschel, and the law school dean, David Logan, denounced Papitto’s remarks in separate statements Monday.

“Such behavior has no place in the Roger Williams educational community,” Logan said.

Logan plans to present the board with a petition from law students demanding a name change, university spokeswoman Judi Johnson said.

“Several people e-mailed me that it will be a disgrace to have the Papitto name on their resumes and their diplomas,” student leader Matt Jerzyk, who was circulating the petition, said in an e-mailed statement.

The board also expects a protest by faculty members, Doyle said.

“They will view these kinds of protestations with a great deal of seriousness,” he said.

Although Papitto has had a long and generous history with the university, Doyle said that had no bearing on the board’s decision to keep the matter private when it happened in May. That decision was made to preserve the reputation of the institution, he said, adding that board members also moved to remove Papitto as soon as they could.

“The board did not shirk its responsibility one iota,” he said.

Nirschel said the school was in the process of adding new members to the board, which will make it one-third female and “increasingly diverse and global.”

When asked about the departure of the three board members, Doyle said the remaining board members felt that they should all be “rolling in the same direction.”

Roberts, who was once Papitto’s cardiologist, said her name was left off the slate of candidates in a board election earlier this month – and she believes it was retaliation for demanding that Papitto step down. Doyle said Roberts threatened to go public with Papitto’s comments, and that’s why the board’s executive committee chose to remove her.

“They did not want to deal with this in a public environment,” he said.

Former trustee Sally Lapides also said she lost her spot on the board because she challenged the chairman, although the given reason was that her attendance record at meetings was poor.

Roger Williams University has roughly 3,880 undergraduate students, according to its Web site. The law school was founded in 1993, and its name was changed to the Ralph R. Papitto School of Law in 1996.

At the time, some students objected to naming the school after someone who was not a lawyer as well as someone who was still alive, saying the school’s reputation might suffer if Papitto got into trouble in the future.

Papitto founded Nortek Inc., which manufactures building products.