It was the middle of the day and seemingly the middle of campus as a crowd of like 50 people paraded through. What’s the meta here? Concuss this fucker so bad he can’t ID an assailant and count on 50 college kids and the professor all plausibly denying knowledge of who kicked the shit out of him? What about other witnesses, both third party and even a detractor to violence in the group? And what about the security cameras that are running on campus anyway that could easily ID the people in the crowd and their relative proximity to the shitstain? What about forensic evidence?

No, for a spontaneous reaction from a completely disorganized crowd of college kids, the biggest issue is probably that some elements of violence aren’t legally defensible (though tossing him on the ground was imo, from a “citizens’ arrest” standpoint). Being non-violent (but ready to pounce if he did something even more stupid) and just humiliating him at length on camera was the right call from the starting point of not having some sort of protocol arranged beforehand.