This article investigates a Basic Writing program shared between a University of California campus and a local community college in which the curriculum, assessment practices, and larger programmatic structures were heavily influenced by an exit exam modeled after the UC system's Analytical Writing Placement Exam (AWPE). Drawing from scholarship on assessment ecologies and critical systems thinking, I analyze data from an institutional ethnography, including interviews with faculty and administrators and institutional documents. My analysis centers on how institutional and administrative thinking about students and faculty established the AWPE as the dominant force within the program, creating friction between stakeholders as perspectives on the program's purpose diverged. This research has implications for the challenges presented by regressive institutional cultures of writing for WPAs and researchers working toward reform in Basic Writing programs across higher education.