It’s no wonder public school authorities just lock themselves in the office and let the inmates run the asylum. This principal is catching it from all sides: the thugs themselves, the namby-pamby school bureaucrats and their media allies, and now the knee-jerk social conservatives. He’ll probably resign and let a PC black woman take the job.
There are far better ways to deal with boys fighting than humiliation that resembles homosexual interaction (which the libs actually like anyhow). When I was a youngster in primary school back in Ireland (this being the 70s), the punishment was a number of blows with a stick; that quietened even the most pugilistic of offenders down. You can bet that the hand-holding won’t change the boys’ behavior. Corporal punishment still exists in the USA, even in schools, and the libs cannot drive it away even through lawfare.