The Office of Sustainability’s EcoReps program, through which students help inform the Georgetown University community about sustainability practices, has announced plans to collaborate with Residential Living to introduce an in-hall sustainability advocate to each residential hall council.
These representatives, who will be jointly chosen by the Residential Living and Office of Sustainability teams, hope to develop programming to improve sustainability in dormitories and introduce educational programs to make students aware of strategies for tackling sustainability problems.
Aidan Metz (MSB ’26), a current resident assistant at New South Hall, said his dorm faces major sustainability issues, including excessive energy consumption.
“I think maybe lights in the hallways could be motion-activated,” Metz wrote to The Hoya. “Currently, they are on 24/7. Having them only be on when is needed would help with energy usage and make it easier to sleep if you’re sensitive to the light that seeps through the door.”
Georgetown was founded in 1789, making it the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the United States. Metz said this might make it difficult to implement changes to residence halls’ infrastructure without funding intensive renovations.
“I think it’s likely very difficult to make large sustainability changes in residence halls. I look at the lawn and the scale of that work and see that it may require a real gutting of the halls to be more sustainable,” Metz wrote. “What I hope is that as they build new ones, they are built with sustainability in mind.”
Nevertheless, EcoReps and Residential Living think the in-hall sustainability representatives can still make a difference. The hope is that the new role can make sustainability issues on campus more known throughout the Georgetown community.
“This new role will elevate discussions about sustainable living and support the development of sustainability programming in the residence halls,” a university spokesperson said in a statement to The Hoya.
In addition, this new role will encourage other students to actively participate in the university’s efforts to improve sustainability, according to the university spokesperson.
“Along with other duties, the representatives will support the hall staff in the development of at least one sustainability-related event per semester,” the university spokesperson wrote. “These events will focus on educating fellow students about sustainability, encouraging adherence to sustainability best practices, or other creative activities that promote sustainability in everyday living.”
Other student-run environmental organizations are hopeful about the potential that this initiative holds. For example, Katherine Wijenaike-Bogle (CAS ’25), the former co-president of GREEN, an on-campus club that holds weekly meetings to educate students about environmental protection, thinks the new in-hall sustainability representatives can help contribute to their mission.
“I’m really excited for the in-hall sustainability representatives to provide insight on how students actually interact with sustainability systems,” Wijenaike-Bogle wrote to The Hoya. “I hope that they’ll serve as the missing link between sustainability initiatives, residential living and the residential community on campus.”
Although Wijenaike-Bogle is hopeful about the impact that these in-hall representatives could have, she recognizes that students must take it upon themselves to improve sustainability at Georgetown. She said that she hopes the in-hall representatives will encourage students to become more aware of the contributions they can make towards a sustainable future.
“My hope is that through practicing daily habits of sustainability, students will begin to connect the dots of how individual action encourages community and global change,” Wijenaike-Bogle wrote.
Wijenaike-Bogle said the best way to encourage more sustainability on campus is to make environmental initiatives accessible and easy to implement. She pointed to the success of the Move-In Drive, which encouraged students to reuse items to save time and money, and hopes the in-hall representatives can help produce similar results.
“The sustainable choice should ideally be the path of least resistance, and I’m sure the in-hall representatives will help make this happen,” Wijenaike-Bogle wrote.