The 1966 Master Plan of the State University of New York decreed the establishment of the State University College of Old Westbury. This new college was to be known as the "experimental" college of S.U.N.Y. The goals expressed by this new college are exciting, inspiring, and due to the system which promulgated them, inherently unrealizable. Due to the needs of the "parent" systems, the "child" could not survive in any form very different from any other state college. The first academic year ended in a sit-in during which most of the students, faculty, and administration found themselves involved in a bitter fight around every issue but the central one--the built-in contradictions inherent in a state supported "experimental" college. The steadily escalating tension arose as a result of the conflict between Old Westbury's college heredity and Old Westbury's college environment (which was both "inherited" and created), plus the environment that is out of its control entirely, the American political scene. (Author/KE)