The crime rate on State Patty’s this year was a little bit lower than last year, according to an article in The Daily Collegian. But that doesn’t redeem this pointless “holiday.”

Calls to the police may have decreased from 480 to 425, but that’s still a huge number for a small town. The number that State Patty’s supporters will no doubt point to in making their case is the 25-percent decrease in police incidents. That’s great, but again, the number of incidents is still very high when put in perspective. That 25-percent decrease was from 377 last year to 283 this past weekend. If we’re being honest with ourselves, then saying “only” 283 police incidents sounds ridiculous in a town with a student population of about 40,000.

Something not included in the Collegian article were the EMS statistics. According to a press release from Centre LifeLink, while the total volume of EMS calls decreased from 83 to 77 this year, alcohol-related calls increased from 34 to 53.

That means alcohol-related incidents made up nearly 69 percent of EMS calls on State Patty’s weekend this year, up from 41 percent last year. That’s very, very high; a number you won’t see during Arts Fest or a football weekend.

We’ve already made the argument that one of the major drawbacks of this student-made drinking holiday is that it diverts medical resources from residents who may need it. This data further supports that. The “holiday” is pointless and dangerous. Crime rates went down this year, which is a step in the right direction, but once again we’ve seen that general drunken debauchery beyond that of a typical weekend at Penn State created a dangerous situation here and is a point that still needs to be addressed.