In January 2008, U-M officials announced that Spring Commencement would take place at Eastern Michigan’s Rynearson Stadium due to construction at Michigan Stadium. 

The backlash from students was swift, with many expressing a strong desire to graduate on their own campus. By February, plans were underway to hold the ceremony on the Diag in Central Campus— for the first and, so far, only time. 

Setup for the ceremony began on April 14, two weeks before graduation. The university brought in 30,000 folding chairs and 20 bleachers to accommodate the crowd, and seating was arranged east to west from the Dana Building to Mason Hall, and north to south from North University Avenue to the Hatcher Graduate Library. 

The university set up temporary fences to block traffic from the seats, built a temporary floor to keep the seating level and trimmed trees to improve the line of sight to the main stage in front of the library. Video screens and audio towers were also installed to livestream the ceremony for attendees who didn’t have a clear view of the stage. 

The ceremony would go on, rain or shine, so it was fortunate that on April 26, early morning rain gave way to partly cloudy skies in time for the arrival of the crowd. With temperatures climbing into the 60s by 9 a.m., nearly 5,000 graduates filed into their seats. 

The keynote speaker that day was Bob Woodruff, a Michigan native, 1987 graduate of the Law School, and the ABC reporter and anchor who’d been injured by an explosive device while on assignment in Iraq in 2006. Woodruff spoke movingly about the resilience of the human spirit, citing his road back from a traumatic brain injury. Woodruff received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at the ceremony. 

Other notable recipients of honorary degrees that day were Njabulo Ndebele, then the vice chancellor and principal of the University of Cape Town, who was presented with a Doctor of Laws, and Ernie Harwell, sportscaster and longtime voice of the Detroit Tigers who received a standing ovation from the crowd as he accepted his Doctor of Humane Letters.

In his closing remarks to graduates, Woodruff told them, “Family and friends are the greatest gifts in life. I found that out when I was injured, and you most likely will encounter a time when you will need to lean on others to help you get by.

“The friends you made here at Michigan will most likely be friends for life.”