We’re No. 1! Boo! We’re No. 1! Yay!

Just think: We are living in the safest and drunkest community in the land.

At least that’s what our two No. 1 rankings tell us. Penn State is the numero uno party school in America, according to the latest Princeton Review Rankings. Woo-hoo! And greater State College is the safest metropolitan area in the nation, according to the Congressional Quarterly Press. Whew.

On the face of it, the two national championships don’t quite jibe with each other, do they?

You don’t get to be the top party school by holing up in the library and sipping chai lattes. Penn State became the leader of the party pack because more students here than elsewhere told the Princeton Review that a) they don’t study much, b) they use a lot of drugs and alcohol, and c) fraternities and sororities are popular.

As the bumper sticker says, this here’s a drinking town with a football problem. And where the alcohol flows we can expect the laws to be flouted.

Yet this is a safe place. So what gives? Are we mellow drunks? Are we so incapacitated by drink that we lack the physical coordination to wreak felonious havoc?

First off, the safety rankings are based on nasty crime totals: murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries and car thefts. Peeing on people’s lawns doesn’t make the cut. Neither does damaging property, howling at the moon at 3 a.m., or furnishing brewskies to underage drinkers.

The safest places ranking serves as a reminder to all who are fed up with all the moronic behavior in our midst: Our drunks are more nuisances than menaces — which is not to minimize incidences of sexual assault, drunk driving and alcohol poisoning.

A student who interviewed me the other day about campus ghost stories asked me why there continues to be so much interest in “the murder in the stacks” — the unsolved stabbing, 40 years ago now, of a graduate student named Betsy Aardsma in Pattee Library.

Beyond the obvious appeal of a good murder mystery, I suggested, the stacks are a spooky place with their low ceilings and their egg-timer lights that can suddenly go off and leave you in the dark. Even before the age of Internet research, I imagine students ventured into the stacks as little as possible. Now that they can Google their way through their undergraduate years, many avoid the stacks altogether. “Murder in the Stacks” is a convenient cautionary tale: Steer clear.

But the other reason the story has such staying power is simply that violent crimes are so rare around here. The only on-campus murder since 1969 was the shooting on the HUB lawn in 1996. It is that sense of safety, perhaps, that accounts for students feeling like they can run wild when they get here. This is not a place where you have to have your wits about you at all times. Indeed, you can get away with being altogether witless.

At an Off-Campus Student Union meeting a couple of weeks ago, a fraternity president said efforts to curtail drinking among students were futile. It’s part of the culture “up here,” he said.

I found that “up here” revealing. It suggests that many students regard State College as a sort of anything-goes zone where the rules of civilized behavior that obtain “down there” don’t apply. You can’t blast loud music or kick down the neighbors’ fence when you’re at your parents’ house “down there,” but it’s perfectly all right to do so “up here.”

I’ve even heard of neighbors who asked a fraternity house to turn down the music being told that if they don’t like the loud parties they shouldn’t live in a college town. I suppose it doesn’t occur to these revelers that in addition to housing students, a college town has to house faculty, staff, bar owners, beer distributors, EMTs…

A widespread view, at least among those who live among the Woo people (as we call the yowling drunks in our neighborhood), is that the bad behavior is getting worse. One of my neighbors, Dave Swanson, has a theory to account for it: The consumption of super-caffeinated beverages along with alcohol enables people to get insanely drunk without passing out. It is these “Red Bull Zombies” who are blundering into people’s houses and staggering around town without any idea of where they are or what they’re doing. Sooner or later, Dave fears, one of these home invaders is going to get shot.

If he’s right, we might have a hard time maintaining that No. 1 ranking on the safe places list.

Speaking of No. 1 rankings, if you haven’t seen Megan Hodge pound a volleyball through the Rec Hall floor, tonight and tomorrow are your last chance. The Penn State women’s volleyball team, which hasn’t lost a match in more than two years, is hosting one of the NCAA tournament regional rounds this weekend, and then it’s off to Florida to play for a third straight championship.

To help Russell Frank move up on the list of most-e-mailed columnists, write to rfrank@psu.edu.