Revolutionary Tales: Riley Whitlock Finds Her Place in GW’s First Sustainability LLC
Revolutionary Tales: Riley Whitlock Finds Her Place in GW’s First Sustainability LLC
Motivated by firsthand experiences, the first-year student is building community and advancing greener efforts through GW’s newest residential program.
Story // Nick Erickson
Video & Photos // Cara Taylor
Every summer since she can remember, Riley Whitlock and her family have made the trek two hours downstate from Westfield, New Jersey, to Wildwood Beach on the state’s south shore. It’s her home away from home.
Her favorite beach game growing up was to sprint down the sand toward the water as she and her sister dared the Atlantic Ocean waves to catch them.
“[My dad] said we looked like little sandpipers on the beach,” said Whitlock, now a first-year student at the George Washington University.
But today, the Whitlock sisters, as well as the sandpipers, don’t have much room to run. New Jersey, not the only coastal state to hold this designation, has experienced significant shoreline retreat.
Since 1986, around the time Whitlock’s mother first started going to Wildwood Beach, the area has lost up to 1,000 miles of shoreline due to chronic erosion—caused by natural forces like storms, sea-level rise and wave action, as well as human impacts such as altering natural sand dunes.
The change was particularly noticeable to Whitlock when she and her family returned for Wildwood’s Oktoberfest a few falls ago. She noted the shore was just 20 feet from the seawall and dunes, thus realizing the severity of the situation.
Namely, would this 40-year family tradition have an eventual end because, well, there would be no setting for it any longer?
“I thought, ‘Is this going to get worse? Am I eventually not going to have this beach to go back to?’” Whitlock said. “Obviously, there are other beaches, but not being able to go to the beach I’ve been to my whole life would be really sad.”
That’s chapter one of her passion for environmental stewardship. She’s now at GW studying sustainability and environmental science, motivated to write many more.
Outdoorsy by nature as bike riding and hiking are also two of her favorite activities, Whitlock decided to study sustainability in the heart of the nation’s capital because of the networking opportunities and access she’d have to offices and agencies that have the power to shape an eco-friendly future.
“Being right next to agencies like the EPA and the National Park Service, it just felt like where the work is actually getting done,” Whitlock said. “I wanted to be right in it, basically.”
Soon after her acceptance, Whitlock found out about the Sustainability LLC (Living-Learning Community), which would be welcoming its inaugural cohort in fall 2025. Wanting to be in an LLC anyway for the built-in community she’d have among fellow first-year students, this one in particular gave her an outlet to find that community under a shared interest.
She is now one of 15 students comprising the Sustainability LLC’s first class that resides in Merriweather Hall on the Mount Vernon campus. The year-long residential experience brings together students who care passionately about the future of the planet and its inhabitants. Whitlock and her cohort live, work and learn together, host events and speakers and engage across campus and in the city.
This LLC is a collaboration between the Office of Sustainability and the Alliance for a Sustainable Future, focusing on both education inside and outside of the classroom. It attracts students such as Whitlock who want to contribute to planetary well-being as they forge new friendships and meaningful networks.
“The idea is to gather a community of first-year students who are all interested in, excited about and passionate for sustainability, and then bring them together on the Vern in Merriweather Hall,” said Assistant Professor of Sustainability Angela Melidosian, who also serves as the point person for the LLC. “It’s really about getting them connected with existing sustainability networks while also having a comfortable home here on the Vern.”
So far this semester, members of the Sustainability LLC have done numerous projects to help make the GW community greener. Whitlock has worked in the Vern Garden, planting seeds like spinach and kale, as well as hairy vetch, which helps put nitrogen back in the soil. Whitlock has never grown a garden, and she’s enjoyed her shifts tending it.
Once a week, she takes the composting bin from Merriweather Hall to its rightful place in the dumpster behind West Hall. It’s a practice that reduces waste and decreases landfill dependency—and one she spearheaded. “[Whitlock] really embodies that excitement for sustainability and that willingness to take on any leadership role, big or small, to help our community be more sustainable,” Melidosian said.
The LLC also serves The Loop, which is GW’s sustainable thrift store operating out of MVC. The cohort has hiked together, utilized the Reuse Market and gone on a sustainability scavenger hunt across campus. Members also recently attended and participated in a town hall hosted by the Office of Sustainability and Alliance for a Sustainable Future.
"I want to make sure [the world] stays livable—not just for now but for the future."
-- Riley Whitlock
The students are all enrolled in a theme-specific University Writing Class called “Imagining a Sustainable Future,” where they look at how climate change is represented in fiction—“cli-fi,” as they dub it. In the spring, they will together take Sustainability 1001, which Melidosian teaches.
Whitlock appreciates the Sustainability LLC for many reasons, but especially because students in it are in various stages of their sustainability journeys, and they are encouraged to learn along the way. While it is just a one-year program, Whitlock sees herself continuing to work in sustainability throughout her time at GW and looks forward to contributing in any way she can.
While she hopes national agencies take bigger steps, she encourages her peers to help through practices such as composting (there are bins in Kogan Plaza and District House), using a reusable water bottle and thrifting. Putting these practices to use now can build a foundation for a sustainable future where everyone can enjoy the natural world around them, Whitlock said.
“I want to make sure [the world] stays livable—not just for now but for the future,” she said. “Being sustainable keeps the world in a manageable position. Basically, we’re trying to maintain things as they are so they don’t spiral into being unusable.”
Whether it’s by reducing carbon emissions, properly composting, introducing native species to gardens or protecting beloved beaches, preserving the planet is a story Whitlock believes is worth authoring.