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CCAP Recap: Civic Lottery & The First Assembly Convening

May 22, 2026

The CUNY Climate Assembly Project on Waste at Hunter College (CCAP) is making history as Hunter College convenes the first university climate assembly in the US!

CCAP is a deliberative democracy initiative that empowers Hunter students to shape sustainable waste strategies for urban vertical campuses.

From April to June 2026, approximately 42 Hunter student assembly delegates and 8 CUNY Graduate Center student small-group facilitators will convene for five full days and four 2-hour workshops. Students will learn from a diverse range of experts, weigh the opportunities and challenges of various waste management solutions, and collectively generate evidence-based recommendations for the campus community.

From Fall 2026 and Spring 2027, approximately 9 post-assembly fellows will work with campus leadership to review and respond to the recommendations.

You can learn more details at the CCAP website.

Our working Hypothesis– The Humanities can Strengthen Decision-Making

Our working hypothesis is that engaging a diverse & demographically representative cohort of CUNY students through democratic decision-making– grounded in lived experience, expert testimony, active learning, and, uniquely, humanistic inquiry– will deepen both process and outcomes from ethical, cultural, and historical perspectives.
By bringing multiple perspectives into synthesis through the Assembly process itself, students will begin to critically reimagine their relationship to democracy, sustainability, and public higher education through the “wedge issue” of waste. Building on the 3Cs of youth development (competence, connection, confidence), the Assembly will provide a civic platform that prepares students to participate more fully in constructive dialogue, campus governance, and civil society.
This hypothesis is grounded by over 1000 examples of civic and climate assemblies worldwide, but is distinct as CCAP is the first university-convened climate assembly in the US– situated at the nation’s largest urban public university.

The Civic Lottery: December 2025 – February 2026

The first stage was to select Assembly Delegates through a civic lottery. All 23,000+ students at Hunter College received an invitation to opt in to the lottery. Delegates were chosen via stratified random sampling during the Civic Lottery Launch Event on February 19th.

The Civic Lottery brings new voices into civic problem-solving and decision-making, while ensuring Hunter’s unique demographic diversity is fully represented–it’s a microcosm of ‘the campus in one room.’

We had nearly 600 students put their names in the lottery! And with support from Hunter leadership and CCAP’s friendly mascot, RaCUNY, we selected the 42 students from 17 departments and across the 5 boroughs to serve as Assembly Delegates.

Civic Lottery Launch Event Speakers

– Kelli Stephens- Sustainability and Energy Specialist & CCAP Administrative Lead
– Nicole Bennett- Associate Provost & Assistant Vice President, Academic Affairs
– Sumaiya Ahmed- Undergraduate Student Government President
– Zobeida Gomez- Director of Operations, Facilities Management and Planning
– Kendra Sullivan– CCAP Co-Director & Director of the Center for the Humanities
– Annie Stoeth- Curriculum Development Fellow, Earth and Environmental Sciences PhD Candidate
– Forrest Sparks- CCAP Program Lead, Co-Founder and Director of The Assembly Project (TAP)
– Sasha Isaac- Democratic Engagement Fellow, Geography PhD Candidate
– Benjamin Solotaire– Senior Advisor for the NYC Civic Engagement Commission

First Assembly Convening: April 6th & 7th

The first two days set the foundation for the assembly’s work together over the next 3 months. The goals for the delegates were to:

Understand the democratic process and build relationships amongst their fellow delegates.
Contextualize the challenges and opportunities of waste management at Hunter College.
Develop a list of information/speaker requests to inform the assembly programming moving forward.

See the full 2-day agenda here and the Road Map for the entire process below.cess below.

High-level takeaways

Interdisciplinary in Action- the room was filled with emerging and established artists, writers, historians, economists, environmental lawyers, psychologists, scientists, storytellers, and filmmakers. Unique to the CCAP process, the civic lottery selected for disciplinary representation in addition to core population demographic criteria to promote multiple ways of thinking, knowing, and collaborating.
Experts on tap– Sanitation and custodial professionals, leaders in sustainability, and urban planners offered expertise on systems-level waste management, diversion, and reduction. The combination of lived experience and expertise laid the foundation for civic problem-solving throughout the process.
Student-led and Administration-backed– With strong institutional support from the Hunter administration, many participants noted that the process inspired institutional trust and interpersonal connection.

On day one, Hunter Leadership opened by expressing their excitement for the democratic process and their commitment to review and respond to the Assembly’s recommendations. The Assembly delegates spent the rest of the morning getting to know each other and establishing Community Agreements.

In the Afternoon, the delegates learned about the history of waste in NYC and the life cycle of various materials in their waste streams. Delegates had time to reflect on their personal relationship with waste and create murals that collectively imagined new relationships to waste.

See photos from the first Assembly convening below in our slideshow:

Day 1 Speakers

– Gustavo Ordóñez– Vice President for Administration
– Nicole Bennett- Associate Provost & Assistant Vice President, Academic Affairs
– Robin Nagle- Clinical Professor of anthropology & environmental studies at NYU, Author of Picking Up
– Fran Agnone- Director of Youth Education at the Sanitation Foundation
– Ramiro Campos- Professor of Geography at Hunter College

Day two grounded the delegates with presentations on the past and current waste management initiatives at Hunter and CUNY. The Assembly was then led on a campus tour of Hunter’s waste management facilities by the custodial and facilities staff. This uncovered the challenges and opportunities for the assembly delegates to further explore.

At the end of day two, the delegates synthesized their learnings and voted on the most important information/speaker requests. These will inform the design and content of the next assembly convenings.

Assembly Delegates are prioritizing and voting on information/speaker requests

Day 2 Speakers

– Kelli Stephens- Sustainability and Energy Specialist & CCAP Administrative Lead
– Douglas Price- Program Manager of The Center for Sustainable Cities
– Tria Case- University Executive Director of Sustainability and Energy Conservation
– Zobeida Gomez- Director of Operations, Facilities Management and Planning
– Steven Jordan- Senior Supervisor of the Custodial Supervisors and Custodial Staff
– Jorge Valles- Custodial Supervisor