More than 40 minority students and faculty members complained to editors of The Daily Evergreen at a meeting Wednesday.

They pointed to Wednesday's edition, which carried an illustration of a football helmet with an unflattering drawing of a black man. It ran in a story about Indian mascots.

A recent edition included an advertisement with a drawing of a black head in an afro hairstyle and earrings. There was also an opinion page illustration of good and evil where the devil looked black and the angel looked white, protesters said.

"People are supposed to have a negative reaction to it," newspaper editor Grant Purdum told the protesters at the meeting.

Stephen Norris, a black student who wrote the mascot story, said he saw the illustration before it was printed and thought it made a point.

"This picture, it's something that we would never see," Norris said. "Why is it that when Native Americans are mascots, people don't consider them offensive images?

"It's not about black or Native Americans," he said. "It's that we're all discriminated against."

Student Christina McRae said she didn't think most people would understand that was the point of the illustration.

"It doesn't really give the effect that you're trying to give," she said.

The meeting several times exploded in anger.

"I demand that this person not only be censured, but that this person be fired," said Lincoln James, a WSU communications professor, referring to the artist of the Wednesday drawing.

After hearing complaints for an hour, Purdum acknowledged that the newspaper had done some things in an offensive way and apologized.

"I never want to make somebody feel inferior," he said.

"The only thing I don't want to do is fire people and all of a sudden everybody's happy," Purdum said.

Student Rob Easterly said that in his four years at WSU he rarely saw minority issues in the newspaper.

"Change the racist tone of your paper," graduate student Kristal Moore told the editors.

Purdum promised a response by Monday.