In an interview with The State News, Hintz mentioned new federal directives that impact funding for the university for things such as research and financial aid. "What brought this to focus was the federal government's expectation that the university certifies our compliance in order to receive federal funding," Hintz said.

This recent pressure from the federal government triggered Michigan State, as well as other institutions, to review activity on campus to ensure that it was in compliance with federal civil rights laws. Due to the existence of the anti-discrimination policy prior to the current federal administration, Hintz views these changes as not necessarily 'caving' to the administration, but rather, ensuring compliance with federal and state regulations. 

"Well, I think that what we're trying to do is make sure that we are in compliance with existing federal law and state law. Again, this isn't anything new for us," Hintz said. "As a matter of fact, kind of this approach to agreeing to the anti-discrimination policy is something that I've seen at other universities prior to the current federal administration." 

Hintz emphasized the prior existence of these laws and said that the university and student groups have been in civil rights compliance. As a larger institution, there was an effort to ensure that that students don’t face the consequences of losing federal funding due to failed compliance, especially in a political climate where the federal government is conducting investigations on other institutions. 

Initially, the primary change was only going to be constitutional reviews and making edits to relevant student organizations, but that shifted into required annual signatures of the anti-discrimination policy for all RSOs. Hintz explained that RSOs' agreement to comply with the anti-discrimination policy is 'standard practice,' and it correlates with the actions of other universities. 

"We first went down the road of looking at constitutions and those documents, but based on my experience other places, it made more sense to do kind of a terms and conditions that we would just ask RSOs to apply to the agree to comply with the anti-discrimination policy of the university, which then would put us in civil rights compliance," Hintz said. 

However, these changes have been in the books prior to Hintz’s arrival, and the anti-discrimination policy has been intact since August of 2024, with the removal of affirmative action clauses occurring in April 2025. Hintz explained that these changes 'aren’t anything new', and compliance with state and federal civil rights regulations have been around for a considerable period of time. 

"Most student organization leaders at the time, if they were aware of specifically how the anti-discrimination of policy applied to their organization, they may have heard of it, they may be familiar, they may practically be following it, but they probably couldn't point to it," Hintz explained. He continued, describing how the recent regulations provided a new level of clarity moving forward. 

Students are still permitted to conduct educational, cultural, historical observations that celebrate or recognize historical events and promote awareness, as long as they do not engage in any sort of exclusion or discrimination. On that note, Hintz mentioned that student affairs are 'using that lens' to work with student organizations, including CORES&CAMS groups, to provide funding for those events. 

Student affairs is currently constructing a new funding model for organizations. Hintz explained that there are conversations with student groups interested in hosting programs that support the mission of Student Affairs, and that the goal is to implement this model at the start of the next academic year.

Regarding the 'abruptness' of these changes and the lack of initial documentation, Hintz said the abruptness was due to the perceived simplicity of the changes, with the required actions from student groups being to review the ADP and sign. Due to the confusion this caused, Hintz released documentation of these changes to student leaders on October 23. 

"We've talked about how this process has caused a lot of stress on our student leaders this fall semester, and for that, I'm sorry," Hintz said. "We have worked hard to kind of make changes, be responsive to student feedback as we're going through this. And I think going forward we're in a much better place where engaging student leaders, we're involving them in the process."