EC Foundation’s recent announcement regarding its initiative to create optional housing for students has come to fruition.

For the upcoming semester, an estimated 60 to 80 students will potentially benefit from the new venture. The move however, represents yet another small step towards facilitating a larger sense of community here at EC.

EC students begin their day narrowly before their first class and ends the moment their last class ends. Because EC students return to their homes and jobs, rather than communal dorms on campus, there can be a sense of transience reinforced by the idea that we’re here ultimately to go elsewhere. It’s easy to understand if and when students feel disconnected.

However, there are two ways to approach any institutional problem. One is to blast and critique it from the outside, the other is to embrace the system wholeheartedly and to affect change from within.

Throughout the years, the Union has written numerous editorials urging students to choose the latter, urging them to become more proactive about influencing and contributing toward the EC community. Whether through ASO elections or rallying around causes like Prop 30, involvement is a type of investment that has its own unique set of dividends.

The announcement regarding this new housing option is exciting for a myriad of reasons, one of which is the chance for a handful of EC students to get wholly involved, to begin building and realizing their ideal of a community from the inside.

None of this should be framed in too rosy of a light, however. The first students to sign up for housing will be guinea pigs as much as pioneers. As much as they hold the opportunity to set a specific tone for housing, they will also be targets of scrutiny.

Other students will look to them to decide whether that rent money is well-spent or better used someplace else. The Foundation will use them as a litmus test to judge whether the school should expand the service and perhaps move towards something more akin to university housing, or be stopped short entirely.

In order for this experiment to be as “successful” as its potential allows, tenants will have to go one step further. Not only will they have to decide upon a culture of inclusion and interaction in their dorms, but they’ll have the daunting task of bridging that behavior through to the campus.

Additionally, the leases, which were initially intended to house exclusively international students, point to a very commendable desire to shift the status quo. Courting and accommodating international students is the mark of healthy academic institutions this day in age.

Should the units come to serve a significant population of international students, however, it would be worthy for the college to explore followup services. While it’s certainly nice to have the infrastructure to provide for them physically, emotional and social support play a large role in acclimating to life in a foreign country.

Despite the challenges ahead, EC should be applauded for these inroads. Change is most often met with skepticism or caustic review, but it’s entirely worth improving the lives of everyone involved. Getting something right is possible only by the determination of strong leadership and involved students and EC is capable of offering both.