The battles over The Koala provide a glimpse of how challenging it can be for a university to uphold its free speech mores yet still remain a civil, welcoming place for its increasingly diverse student body. San Diego State’s code “defends the expression we abhor as well as the expression we support,” meaning The Koala can mouth off about different races and still be untouchable.

Jung Min Choi, an associate professor in the sociology department, has been one of The Koala’s most vocal critics, frequently using the paper in his classes as living exhibits of racial intolerance. In 2008, an African-American professor in his department was attacked in an anonymous reader letter: “Your dissatisfaction with being a fat, ugly and childless black woman is evident,” read part of the letter. It accused the professor of “preaching” instead of “teaching.” Dr. Choi, who specializes in race and identity, and his colleagues approached the university’s Center for Student Rights and Responsibilities about what they considered a case of faculty harassment.

“I must say I was not actually greeted very warmly,” he recalled.

Officials told him they had no intention of censuring the paper. “They have a right to be here,” Greg Block, the chief communications officer, told me. “We don’t necessarily agree with everything they publish, but that’s neither here nor there.” And when students pleaded last fall with Mark Freeman, chairman of the Freedom of Expression Committee, to help shut it down, he wrote back that “freedom of the press is very broadly protected.”

Jimmy Talamantes, a graduate student who is Mexican-American, was one of the letter signers. He called the response disappointing. “Students should not feel threatened by any person or organization while attending an institution of higher learning,” he said.

Image SERIOUSLY "This is not highbrow journalism," said Erik Luchsinger, a recent editor. "But we are still trying to do something substantial." He, and the spirit of Kramer, presided over a staff meeting in the fall. Credit... T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND what’s so funny about The Koala, I joined the staff at one of its Sunday night meetings, in a cluttered one-bedroom apartment on the edge of the San Diego State campus. Sitting on a shag rug beneath a framed poster of the “Seinfeld” character Kramer, and between bites of guava cookies supplied by Mr. Luchsinger’s mother, students reviewed their last issue, which was projected onto a flat-screen television. When the scan stopped on the staff box, they cackled at their pen names. The use of them angers critics, who complain that if The Koala is going to publish its targets’ names, the staff ought to use real names, too.

“Who’s Toilet?” someone asked, reading off one of the bylines. The room chortled.

Mr. Luchsinger talked finances, then consulted the group on the paper’s fraying relationship with the university’s Afrikan Student Union. “Do you guys think it would be a good idea to have them come over here and write white people jokes for us?” he asked. The idea was tabled after a brief discussion and more chuckles.