Michigan State transfer offensive lineman Andrew “A.J.” Dennis’ world was turned upside down when Michigan State went through its Mel Tucker calamity last year.

The Tucker news broke just after Dennis has committed to the Spartans. Instead of immediately changing his mind, however, Dennis waited it out before he ultimately decided he would commit to Illinois.

He discussed the situation when he joined “The Drive With Jack ” on Friday.

“Had some contact with the staff and I waited about a month or two, and there’s no new information about what’s going,” Dennis said. “So, you don’t really have a head coach less than a month from signing day. It’s getting stressful by that point because you don’t know if you should wait or find a spot. And so, I just wanted to find a spot. And we were actually on our way back after I committed to Illinois, and you see Coach Smith get hired, so it was kind of a funny timing.”

After Jonathan Smith was hired as Michigan State’s new head coach, the Spartans took the opportunity to pursue Dennis once again.

“You kind of look at the term rebuild, and he [Smith] did a great job of that at Oregon State,” Dennis said. “You see that, whether it’s winning 10 games or putting guys in the league like they did last weekend with [Taliese Fuaga]. … So, you see that’s there, they’re not just kind of selling it to you. So you see that, and when I was committed, I told them, ‘Hey, I’m not going to go visit anywhere else.’ And that happened with Illinois, and I told them the same thing. [Michigan State was] like, ‘Hey, we get it, wholeheartedly, 100%.’ And so, they [Michigan State] understood that, and they came up and saw me once, and I heard them out. 

In an effort to not “burn bridges,” Dennis told Michigan State he appreciated them coming to talk to him. That effort would end up paying off.

“I was around some great people [at Illinois], but I just didn’t feel like it was the best fit for me,” Dennis said. “I wanted to be closer to home, and here we are today.”

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Pro-Palestinian protesters briefly disrupted a commencement ceremony at the University of Michigan on Saturday while demonstrators faced off with police at the University of Virginia as U.S. colleges braced for more turmoil during graduation festivities.

Students across the U.S. have rallied or set up tents at dozens of universities to protest the months-long war in Gaza and call on President Joe Biden, who has supported Israel, to do more to stop the bloodshed in Gaza. They also demand their schools divest from companies that support Israel’s government, such as arms suppliers.

Videos shared on social media showed dozens of students wearing the traditional keffiyeh headdress and graduation caps and waving Palestinian flags as they walked down the center aisle of Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, among cheers and boos from a crowd of thousands.

The ceremony continued and campus police escorted the protesters toward the back of the stadium, but no arrests were made, according to Colleen Mastony, a spokesperson for the university.

“Peaceful protests like this have taken place at U-M commencement ceremonies for decades,” Mastony said in a statement. “The university supports free speech and expression, and university leaders are pleased that today’s commencement was such a proud and triumphant moment.”

The weekend brought more action across U.S. campuses where contrasting views over Israel’s war in Gaza have erupted, sometimes violently, over the last couple of weeks.

Many of the schools, including Columbia University in New York City, have called in police to quell the protests.

Tensions briefly flared up once more on Saturday at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Police officers in riot gear can be seen in a video moving on an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters, cuffing some demonstrators with zip ties and dragging them across the lawn.

Police have so far arrested over 2,000 protesters at colleges around the country.

The University of Michigan is one of the many universities which altered their security protocols for graduation ceremonies.

The school told Reuters last week it trained staff volunteers in how to mitigate disruptions, a change from the usual duties of guiding guests around campus and showing them to their seats.

The anti-war protests have been staged in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which it launched after a Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that Israel says killed 1,200 people. Israel has killed over 34,000 people in retaliation, according to Gaza health authorities, and flattened the Palestinian territory.

OUTRAGE AT OLE MISS

Campus protests have emerged as a new political flashpoint during a hotly contested and deeply divisive U.S. election year.

On Thursday, a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Mississippi was met by a larger crowd of counter-protesters singing the national anthem and carrying U.S. flags.

The events at Ole Miss, the state’s flagship university, drew widespread outrage and condemnation after a viral video showed a group of mostly white students taunting a Black female protester. Some shouted racist remarks and one individual can be heard making what sounded like monkey noises at the Black student.

While the university’s chancellor condemned the “racist overtones” of the incident and said an investigation was underway, Georgia Republican U.S. Representative Mike Collins shared the video on his X account on Friday, writing “Ole Miss taking care of business”.

A spokesperson for Collins said he was pointing to examples of “regular everyday students … pushing back against the very small group of leftist agitators who care only to disrupt and destroy.”

Another Republican, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, on Saturday said he was sending Chick-fil-A, a popular U.S. fast food chain, to the counter-protesters who “protected our flag and stood up for America” on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill earlier this week.

“The actions of these young men make me hopeful for the next generation’s love for our country,” Graham’ X post read.

By PHILIP MARCELO (Associated Press)

Protesters chanted anti-war messages and waved Palestinian flags during the University of Michigan’s commencement Saturday, as student demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza collided with the annual pomp-and-circumstance of graduation season at American universities.

The protest happened at the beginning of the event at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. About 75 people, many wearing traditional Arabic keffiyeh along with their graduation caps, marched up the main aisle toward the graduation stage.

They chanted “Regents, regents, you can’t hide! You are funding genocide!” while holding signs, including one that read: “No universities left in Gaza.”

Overhead, planes flew competing messages. One read: “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” The other read: “We stand with Israel. Jewish lives matter.”

Officials said no one was arrested, and the protest didn’t seriously interrupt the nearly two-hour event, which was attended by tens of thousands of people, some of them waving Israeli flags.

State police prevented the demonstrators from reaching the stage and university spokesperson Colleen Mastony said public safety personnel escorted the protesters to the rear of the stadium, where they remained through the conclusion of the event.

“Peaceful protests like this have taken place at U-M commencement ceremonies for decades,” she added.

U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro paused a few times during his remarks, saying at one point, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you can please draw your attention back to the podium.”

Before he administered an oath to graduates in the armed forces, Del Toro said they would “protect the freedoms that we so cherish,” including the “right to protest peacefully.”

The university has allowed protesters to set up an encampment on campus but police assisted in breaking up a large gathering at a graduation-related event Friday night, and one person was arrested.

Michigan was among the schools bracing for protests during its commencement ceremonies this weekend, including Indiana University, Ohio State University and Northeastern University in Boston.

Many more are slated in the coming weeks, including universities in New York that have been roiled by demonstrations, including Columbia, NYU and CCNY. Columbia University officials have asked the NYPD to maintain a presence on campus until after the school’s planned May 15 graduation.

At Indiana University, protesters were urging supporters to wear their keffiyehs and walk out during remarks by President Pamela Whitten on Saturday evening. The campus in Bloomington, Indiana, has designated a protest zone outside Memorial Stadium, where the ceremony is set to take place.

Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in recent weeks in a student movement unlike any other this century. Some schools have reached agreements with the protesters to end the demonstrations and reduce the possibility of disrupting final exams and commencements.

Many encampments have been dismantled and protesters arrested in police crackdowns.

The Associated Press has recorded at least 61 incidents since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the U.S. More than 2,400 people have been arrested on 47 college and university campuses. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.

At Princeton, in New Jersey, 18 students launched a hunger strike in an effort to push the university to divest from companies tied to Israel.

Senior David Chmielewski, a hunger striker, said in an email Saturday that the latest protest started Friday morning with participants consuming water only.

He said the hunger strike will continue until university administrators meet with students about their demands, which include amnesty from criminal and disciplinary charges for protesters.

Other demonstrators are participating in “solidarity fasts” lasting 24 hours, he said.

Princeton students set up a protest encampment and some held a sit-in at an administrative building this week, leading to about 15 arrests.

Students at other colleges, including Brown and Yale, launched similar hunger strikes earlier this year before the more recent wave of protest encampments.

In other developments Saturday, police broke up a demonstration at the University of Virginia. Campus police called it an “unlawful assembly” in a post on the social platform X.

Footage from WVAW-TV showed police wearing tactical gear removing protesters from an encampment on the Charlottesville campus. Authorities have not said how many people were arrested.

Meanwhile near Boston, students at Tufts University peacefully took down their protest encampment without police intervention Friday night.

Officials with the school in Medford, Massachusetts, said they were pleased with the development, which wasn’t the result of any agreement with protesters. Protest organizers said in a statement that they were “deeply angered and disappointed” that negotiations with the university had failed.

The protests stem from the Israel-Hamas conflict that started on Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of Gaza’s inhabitants.

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Marcelo reported from New York. Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit; Nick Perry in Boston; and Adrian Sainz in Memphis contributed to this story.