UCSB has apparently plummeted from the hearts of Hugh Hefner’s playboy bunnies.

The 2009 Playboy Party School Rankings list, released earlier this month, named UCSB the 12th ranked party college in the nation – a significant drop from the number two spot, where UCSB had sat since 2006. The Top Party Schools 2009 list describes UCSB as, “the ‘Harvard’ of Santa Barbara” and says “the Isla Vista party scene…puts basement keggers at any campus to shame.”

University administrators, naturally, are not particularly excited.

“First of all, I don’t pay any attention to “party school rankings” like the Princeton Review,” Executive Vice Chancellor Gene Lucas said in an email. “They are not based on credible methods and have pre-determined outcomes. Second, we have, in our recruitment and admissions practices, twin goals of increasing both the intellectual quality and the diversity of our students. I think we have had dramatic success in doing so, and will continue to work toward those goals.”

Sunny Nagra, a second year business economics and accounting major, said he took it hard when UCSB failed to claim a top ten spot.

“Personally, I think it’s a bad thing,” Nagra said. “If parents look at the party list, either way we’re going to be on it somewhere, so they’re going to hate it whether we’re number 12 or number two. But if we are number two, kids will like it more and we’ll get a cooler student body.”

But Michelle Kitson of Student Health’s Alcohol and Drug Program said the list cannot be taken too seriously: according to alcohol and drug use surveys completed by students each year, there has been no significant change in the student body’s drug or alcohol intake.

“The last five years have been pretty consistent,” Kitson said. “We haven’t seen a rise or a drop.”