To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the publication of Mina Shaughnessy's groundbreaking book, "Errors and Expectations," a roundtable discussion was held at the March 2007 Conference on College Composition and Communication in New York City. This article, based on the earlier discussion, examines the question of CUNY's multiple identities within the legacy of Shaughnessy, who coined the term "basic writing" and founded the Journal of Basic Writing in 1975. Composition theory and practice owe much to Shaughnessy's work at CUNY's City College in the 1970s against the backdrop of the University's experiment with Open Admissions. Although much has changed since then, CUNY is still associated with that rich historical moment, and with the questions Shaughnessy and others at the time confronted. These questions, which grapple with the very nature of literacy and democracy, need to be reframed for our times. Contributors to this article include scholars from a number of CUNY's 17 undergraduate colleges, each of whom begins with a quotation selected to focus attention on an issue of relevance today.