Dan Nadler was glad to report some good news to faculty senate during their meeting Tuesday.

“We’re pleased to say that after the first year, we’ve seen about a 40 percent reduction in disciplinary cases where excessive drinking is involved,” the vice president for student affairs said.

Nadler informed the senate about the AlcoholEdu results.

AlcoholEdu is an online tutorial about alcohol consumption, which incoming freshmen students have to complete. The program is in its second year.

“Certainly our very youngest students believe that they’re experts when it comes to alcohol and education, but surprisingly, a number of them failed the exam the first time and had to take it a second time or even a third time,” Nadler said.

The meeting was yet another forum between President Bill Perry and constituents within the university. However, this meeting featured both Perry and the President’s Council.

The senate responded to this alcohol situation, with reference to Sunday morning’s police raid of Jerry’s Pizza that resulted in 86 underage patrons receiving tickets.

Chairwoman Lynne Curry said this is a community relation issue as well, and having intoxicated students walking through private property makes the university look bad. Perspective students and faculty may find the area to be either a nice place to live or some place they don’t want to live, Curry said.

“We do have an alcohol coalition in place,” Nadler said. “It’s not easy to get bar owners to the table because they feel like they’re going to be used as punching bags.”

Nadler added the administration was successful in bringing some of the bar owners together last semester.

“To some extent, there is some frustration on their part, but we all want to do the right thing and I think we need to just stick together,” he said.

Faculty Senate member Robert Fischer told Nadler how he feels the city of Charleston needs to help by working on zoning issues, and to change its own image. Fisher, a Charleston resident, said the city needs to improve its communication, and help protect residents who contribute to the community.

In other business, a $4.2 million electrical upgrade was one of many topics reported to the senate by Jeff Cooley, vice president for business affairs. He informed the senate of anticipated outages during the spring and summer semesters, when the electrical upgrade is taking place.

Cooley told the senate that major interior and exterior work would be conducted on the campus water tower next spring to remove asbestos and lead.

During Perry’s segment of the dialogue, he addressed a question from Curry about finding a new athletic director. Perry said various constituency groups have now been asked to submit three nominations by Sept. 28 for people to sit on the search committee.

Once formed, Perry said the committee will conduct interviews by February or March, and the goal is to have a new athletic director in place by July.