UCOD Meeting Notes (February 10, 2026)

UCLA Committee on Disability / UCOD Meeting Notes (February 10, 2026)

UCOD Meeting Notes (February 10, 2026)

UCOD Meeting
February 10, 2026 / 2PM / Zoom

Attendees

Voting Members:
Yasamin Bolourian, Fang-I Chu, Christine Craib, Cate Gvon, Travis Lee, Carolanne Link (Proxy for Caitlin Solone), Sanaz Nabati, Quinn O’Connor (Proxy for Alexa Vaughn), Grace Overman, Sylvia Page, Aryan Pandey, Harold Pimentel, Emilia Podesta, Sal Santa Ana, Nicholas Shinghal

Absent:
Michael Garafola

Guests:
Mauricio Baker Mason, Monic Clare, Rob Diaz, Marissa Klymkiw, Yonit Kovnator, Ariella Morrison, Spencer Scruggs, K. Supriya, Joe Rauda

Agenda

1. Intros (TL, 10 mins)

2. Brief reminder of Michael’s card (CL, 5 mins)

3. Go over timeline for elections (CL, 7 mins)

a. Available positions: 1 undergrad, 1 grad, 1 faculty, 2 staff, 1 alumni, 3 floaters. These are 2 year positions who vote on committee issues. Must attend or send a proxy for ⅔ meetings.

b. Leadership spots turnover annually: 1 Chair, 2 Vice Chairs, 1 Secretary, 1 Treasurer (new), 1 Voting Facilitator, 1 Physical Spaces Subcommittee Head, 1 Events/DPW Subcommittee Head, 1 Technology/Website Subcommittee Head, 1 Newsletter Subcommittee Head.

c. Timeline:

i. 2/16-3/6: Interest in election form is open

ii. 3/10: Speeches for run-offs

iii. 3/11-4/10: Voting for run-offs & voting committee confirmed

iv. 4/14: New committee announced

v. 4/15-5/8: Leadership form open

vi. 5/12: Leadership candidate speeches

vii. 5/13-6/5: Leadership candidate vote

viii. 6/9 (June Meeting): Leadership turnover

d. Please mark all eligibility on the interest form (e.g. graduate student and general representative). If a specific position is preferred, let Carolanne know.

4. DPW Planning (TL,10 mins)

a. Early planning could result in funding for more swag, guest speaker, film screenings, etc.

b. Guest speaker ideas

i. CAE is interested in hosting Dustin Feldman. Could pair with a screening of Deaf President Now!

ii. Suggestion to feature UCLA speakers, though paying internally can be difficult. Could reach out to Disability Studies for ideas.

c. Suggestion to do more experiential activities.

d. Suggestion to market during Enormous Activities Fair.

e. Suggestion to do a disability-focused film festival. Quinn has a filmmaker contact.

f. Suggestion to partner with the Library around archiving LA28.

g. Suggestion to host an author talk and have a book club leading up to it.

5. Funding opportunities update (FC,10 mins)

a. Fang has identified and reviewed around 20 possible funding opportunities, some of which may be misaligned.

b. Pending clarification on UCLA guidelines on applying for external funding

c. Suggestion to do a spark campaign with Development. Competitive process and works best with a specific goal.

d. Is anyone aware of committees that receive outside funding?

6. Empower student work inquiry (QO, TL,10 mins)

a. UCOD is interested in current students’ initiatives and projects.

b. Subcommittee heads can help provide guidance,

c. Nicholas provides front-end website consultations through DCP. Focus on content developers.

d. Please contact Quinn and Travis with other ideas.

7. Fun news about accessible technology for the Super Bowl

8. Departmental updates

a. Upcoming Career Center and Underground Scholars and Student Legal Services: Making Disclosures on February 23rd, 4pm-5:30pm.

i. If you have any comments or suggestions for content for this workshop, please contact Sanaz.

b. Issue raised about UC-wide travel policy for only paying for basic economy seats. Confusion over what documentation to provide for travel accounting. These requests are handled at the department level on a case by case basis.

i. Travis will invite Cate and Mauricio to an upcoming leadership meeting to discuss this matter in more depth.

9. Closed door meeting for voting members (3:15-3:30)

a. Meeting with representatives from Facilities about elevator issues.

i. A lot of the elevator equipment is proprietary.

ii. Suggestion to create opt-in BruinAlerts around accessibility issues.

iii. Current practice is to send an outage notification to building managers. Facilities is working on creating a public-facing page displaying all elevator outages and status reports for current outages across buildings. The page would also prompt anyone to create tickets.

iv. Is there a way for disabled users to tag facilities requests as ADA critical? 311 app is continually being improved.

v. Action for the committee: provide recommendations to Facilities around communication solutions: 311 app, listserv, updated information on the website.

Action Items

Spencer will get a quote from Dustin Feldman for the week of October 13th.
Travis will invite Joe Rauda to the next UCOD meeting.
Travis will ask the Office of Inclusive Excellence about a place from which to receive monies.