COLUMBIA, Mo. – Ah, college life. All-night study sessions in the library. Professors challenging the conventional wisdom. Snowball battles on the quad.

For students at the University of Missouri-Columbia, college is all about casual sex, meddling parents, foul-mouthed friendships and partying until you puke – that is, if you believe the portrayal in The Booze News, a new weekly newspaper that glorifies the wonders of heavy drinking.

The publication’s founders, a pair of University of Illinois graduates, call The Booze News (motto: “Today’s News … Under the Influence”) an over-the-top satire modeled after The Onion, the popular parody newspaper started by college students in Madison, Wis., that has since gone global.

But some Missouri students and local business owners aren’t laughing. A Booze News book review about interracial gay adoption that referred to the two male parents as “freaks” drew a formal protest and request that university officials censure the paper.

Several downtown business owners have thrown out the free paper, which has published seven issues, afraid of offending customer sensibilities. Even some campus fraternity houses deem the material too edgy for members.

“The paper is not for 8-year olds,” said co-founder Atish Doshi, a 2004 Illinois graduate from suburban Detroit. “It’s about being immature college kids. That’s what makes it successful. We don’t take ourselves seriously.”

Success has come quickly for Doshi and Derek Chin, who said they started the paper three years ago “as a complete joke.”

The Booze News can now be found at Illinois State, Indiana, Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with Missouri and Illinois.

Doshi, who works in Chicago with a staff of six, said he expects to expand to another dozen campuses in the next year.

“I would love to be at as many schools as possible,” Doshi said. “There will always be college students.”

For Missouri senior Kyle Ali, a Chicago native, such a scenario is troubling. As a peer educator who works to control drug and alcohol abuse, Ali said The Booze News sends the wrong message.

“This is a publication that clearly condones high-risk behavior,” he said. “There’s nothing that talks about alcohol poisoning or drunk-driving.”