Wellesley’s Accessibility and Disability Resources (ADR) office asked students with accommodations to use the AI note-taking app GLEAN before requesting a student notetaker, a move that caused frustration among students and faculty. 

In an email sent on Jan. 15 to students with accommodations, Courtney Mulligan, Director of Accessibility and Disability Resources, wrote “This [GLEAN] is an AI note-taking software that we’re hoping will allow some independence and control for folks who have traditionally relied on peer notetakers.”

GLEAN is an AI note-taking app that “records lectures in full, flags key moments in one click and allows students to add rich content” to their notes. 

Students voiced concerns and difficulties regarding the use of GLEAN at a Senate meeting. 

Destiny Eversole ’27, one of the students who spoke out at Senate, is concerned about the “massive breach of privacy” for students recorded while speaking in class. She also pointed out the conflict between revealing that a student requires accommodations and providing a disclaimer when recording the class. 

“Because of the nature of this being an accommodation, it can’t be revealed, as per privacy laws … as new faculty were never informed about this fact, that means they end up in a space where the app is being used … and thus can be recorded at any time during class without their knowledge,” said Eversole.

 In response to these concerns, ADR has begun to hold meetings with Students for an Accessible Wellesley (SAW), a student organization which connects students with disabilities and helps students get necessary accommodations. Professors have also expressed discomfort with being recorded during classes.  

“We’ve had faculty say, ‘I don’t know what I can allow or not.’ If you’re being asked to record your lecture, your intellectual property or even a class where people are sharing personal anecdotes and stories, that can be very challenging to navigate,” said Natalia Quintana ’25, president of SAW.

Students and faculty are also wary of how introducing AI in notetaking could impact academic integrity. 

“There’s probably a generative aspect to the AI that makes those notes no longer a product of what the professor was saying solely, but a product of what the professor was saying, plus the AI’s interpretation of it,” Quintana said. 

According to Quintana, prior to the switch, ADR’s AI system detected that students who asked for notetaker accommodations did not open notes that the notetaker provided. 

Mulligan said, “In Fall 2024, there were 168 classes being supported by notetakers; of those, 54 of the classes never opened a single note. This is an indication that the system is not meeting its intended goal.”

Given the office’s tight budget, this trend prompted ADR to recommend using GLEAN for in-class note taking before requesting a student notetaker.  

Students are taking issue with ADR’s rationale for shifting away from a student notetaker in their accommodations.  

“That’s not really how I’ve ever understood accommodations from a legal perspective,” said Alex Teasley ’27, an Academic Council representative. “It’s not that you should be required to use the resource, or that your access to the resource should be dependent on whether you need it.”

At the beginning of this semester, ADR was tracking how many people were using the new AI notes. To Quintana, the tracking felt like “surveillance.”

Such feelings of surveillance may discourage students from asking for future accommodations, according to Quintana.  

Students are speculating that ADR’s push for AI is motivated by cost reductions at the expense of on-campus student employment opportunities.

“It seems to me that that’s a very cost-cutting argument, as opposed to an argument actually grounded and making experiences better for disabled students on campus. It seems like they just don’t want to pay the student notetakers,” Teasley said. 

Even if ADR was not intentionally taking away student jobs, because there was no student input regarding the switch, the loss of on-campus jobs was not considered, according to Eversole. 

While the switch from student note-takers to GLEAN has been tumultuous, Quintana remains hopeful about future interactions between the student body and ADR.  

In an email to the Wellesley News, Mulligan also mentioned further engagement with the student body, as she said ADR would be attending a College Government meeting in early March to speak more about the switch to GLEAN. 

“We want to ensure students have an opportunity to engage around these issues,” said Mulligan.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Sazma Sarwar, Jessica Chen, and Valida Pau