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I'm new to this stack exchange, and so far I've only asked 2 questions (neither being offensive). One got closed for being "off topic," and then I created a new post modifying it. (I've since learned that you have to edit the original instead of creating a new one.) When I tried to submit a 3rd question (unrelated to the previous two), it said that this particular stack exchange was not accepting questions from me for another two days because my questions "weren't received well in the community." It also said that subsequent behavior could result in being banned altogether.

I wanted to ask if this meant that the questions were flagged or reported by another user? Again, these weren't offensive questions (I was inquiring about apologizing to a professor), but they were downvoted. It's one thing to downvote, as everyone has the right to express their opinion, but if the question is unoffensive, others shouldn't be able to have a user blocked or banned. Again, I wasn't sure if this was an automatic response because the questions were closed or if it means that people flagged them or complained to the mods?

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That message is about a question ban - you can read more about what question bans are and how they work at this main meta FAQ post. They weren't flagged as offensive (if you were suspended for that, you would've gotten an inbox message explaining, since it's a manual process).

In short, the system automatically applies question bans if users have too many downvoted and/or closed posts. The solution is to improve your existing posts, and contribute positively in other ways to the site (writing good answers can help too).

If you haven't seen already, here's some FAQ posts that might help:

We also have a Sandbox for Proposed Questions, where you can get some preliminary feedback (whether it's on-topic, has sufficient details, etc.) before posting to the main site.

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