A suburban Chicago school board member has resigned over comments he made on Twitter in which he used an offensive term for women to describe participants in Saturday's Women's March.
In a letter shared by Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Superintendent Laurie Heinz on Monday morning, Dr. Dathan Paterno announced his immediate resignation from the board, citing recent posts from his personal Twitter account.
"I wrote some provocative tweets re: the recent women's marches," the letter says. "In retrospect, they were inappropriate and pushed too far in some ways. While I merely meant to harshly criticize some of the protestors (especially the very angry, hostile, vulgar and violent ones) and question the motives of some of them, my tweets were understandably misinterpreted to mean that I disrespect or hate all the protestors. Of course, this isn't true, but the damage was done."
In one of the tweets, which was posted Sunday morning, Paterno, a clinical psychologist with Park Ridge Psychological Services, wrote, "Most of these vagina screechers didn't vote, but they mean business. Riiiiiiiight. What a farce."
Later, in response to a comment that referred to the tweet as "an interesting way for someone on the School District 64 board to speak about women," Paterno replied that he was "referring very specifically to the hyper-angry women dressed in vagina costumes."
In a separate Tweet, Paterno wrote, "Alas, the 300 million pound Women March provides a strong argument for doing away with women's suffrage," the tweet said.
Paterno's Twitter account has since been deleted. He did not immediately respond to calls and emails Monday.
Stephanie Murphy, a Park Ridge parent who was planning to attend Monday's school board meeting with a group of other parents, said she was pleased with Paterno's resignation.
Prior to the announcement of Paterno's resignation, a number of parents told the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate they planned to attend tonight's meeting of the District 64 school board to express their anger over Paterno's comments.
"I was highly offended," said Elena Demos, the mother of a Roosevelt Elementary School student. "I marched in the Women's March on Chicago, and I don't appreciate being called a 'vagina screecher.' And I did vote."
"It's offensive and abusive language," said parent Steve Kopka. "If a child in a District 64 school said this, they would be suspended _ and rightly so. And here is somebody who (is) supposedly representing our students and our education system. I couldn't believe it."
Paterno's four-year term on the school board ends in April, and he was not running for re-election.
