Sometimes it pays to look at the hints that Git gives you. I found this area:
* branch main -> FETCH_HEAD
hint: You have divergent branches and need to specify how to reconcile them.
hint: You can do so by running one of the following commands sometime before
hint: your next pull:
hint:
hint: git config pull.rebase false # merge
hint: git config pull.rebase true # rebase
hint: git config pull.ff only # fast-forward only
hint:
hint: You can replace "git config" with "git config --global" to set a default
hint: preference for all repositories. You can also pass --rebase, --no-rebase,
hint: or --ff-only on the command line to override the configured default per
hint: invocation.
fatal: Need to specify how to reconcile divergent branches.
Re-reading this and then using the following command from the CLI (accessed by Ctrl-`) this merged my divergent branches and allowed my student to commit finally.
git config pull.rebase false # merge
I do still wonder, what did my student to cause the divergent branches?