Student notetakers no longer to receive monetary stipends

By copying his notes for students with disabilities, Brian Tat earned $800 in four quarters – money he has used to pay for his own textbooks.

But beginning this spring, student notetakers like Tat, a second-year statistics and mathematics economics student, will no longer receive stipends for their services.

The UCLA Office for Students with Disabilities recruits students to take and share notes with students who have temporary or permanent disabilities, said Christian Limon, auxiliary services coordinator at the Office for Students with Disabilities. Around 1200 students are eligible to receive notes through the program, and students from 750 to 800 classes request notes each quarter, Limon added.

Starting this quarter, the office will stop handing out its $100-per-class and $25-per-discussion section stipends for notetakers after UCLA Tax Services reviewed the ambiguous, paid volunteer position, Limon said.

“We received advice from outside tax counsel that if student notetakers are paid compensation by the university they must be treated as employees for federal income and employment tax purposes,” said Scott Monatlik, director of UCLA Tax Services, in an email statement. “Alternatively, the notetakers could provide their services as volunteers.”

Officials from the Office of Students with Disabilities said paying notetakers as employees would add significant costs that are not covered in the budget.

“(Students) are providing a copy for the notes they’re taking themselves,” Limon said. “(Sometimes) it’s a matter of clicking ‘submit,’ which takes less than a minute per week. Would they be paid for the three to five minutes the actual submission of the notes would take?”

Typically about 300 students serve as notetakers each quarter.

Cancelling the stipends will free up about $165,000 from the office’s budget, money that might be used to purchase smart pens, which are digital note-taking tools, for notetakers and students with disabilities, as well as incentives like Target and Trader Joe’s gift cards for volunteer notetakers, Limon said. Office administrators are also considering offering independent research credit units and service hours to prevent the number of volunteer notetakers from declining.

But to many students, such incentives are not enough to motivate them to contribute their note-taking services.

“Personally for me, those incentives don’t really mean much compared to the stipend,” Tat said.

Tat said he estimates he spends around 45 more minutes a week taking extra notes and photocopying them for the Office for Students with Disabilities. He said, though, that he understands the office’s reasons for canceling the stipends.

Jade Ferreira-Yang, a second-year chemical engineering student, said she expects the number of volunteer notetakers to drop in the coming quarters.

“(Note-taking) really shouldn’t sum up to be that much more work, but it sounds like the incentive isn’t going to be enough for some people,” said Ferreira-Yang, who was a notetaker last fall and applied to be one again this quarter. “It’s a bummer that (the Office for Students with Disabilities is) not paying people anymore, but I don’t think that’s a reason to stop volunteering.”

Administrators at the office said they acknowledge they might now have more difficulty recruiting notetakers. Limon added that since the office notified students the stipends will no longer be distributed, no one who applied to be a notetaker has revoked their application.

“We’ll do our best to get all the classes covered,” said Ed McCloskey, assistant director of the office. “I’m hoping that students will have the altruistic interest in helping other students.”