Finally, the party’s over.

Don Lippert and Ian Vonie were sentenced Friday for the party that made Meadow Street infamous. The party’s hosts were sentenced to pay $3,500 in fines, 12 months probation and 100 hours of community service.

And it’s likely that they’ll serve it alone, although they shouldn’t.

For weeks after the Meadow Street bust students mustered up as much outrage as they could. Students believed that the police had overstepped their bounds and began throwing allegations.

One guest columnist in this paper even said that the police ignored their moral obligations: “When did the quaint morals of yesterday’s small town cops get thrown out of the window?”

Today, after the dust has finally settled, where are those students now? Where is the outrage over those “ruined lives?” More important, where is their moral obligation?

Lippert and Vonie were the primary fall guys for the entire party, all 109 citations, and faced much stiffer penalties than anyone who received an underage drinking citation – and those penalties could have been much worse. They didn’t have the luxury of slipping away anonymously and paying their fines. They became “those guys who threw that party.”

Now those same students who bemoaned the party bust, wrote letters and complained about the police are nowhere to be found, off somewhere minding their own business again.

If they ever really cared, the time to do something is now. They can either let Lippert and Vonie pay for it all themselves, or they can acknowledge that the same thing could have happened to anyone.

About $70 dollars from every student cited that night could cover the $7,000 in fines – if you include every student that acted outraged the dollar amount per person is much lower. Even $5 from a couple of people could make a difference.

Complain all you want, but there’s a big difference between talk and action.

Put your money where your outrage is.