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Hello everyone! This is Jill King, Founder and Executive Director of the Students with Disabilities Advocacy Group (otherwise known as SDAG)! When we started the SDAG on Georgia Southern's Statesboro campus in 2021, I never imagined the impact of the connections I'd make within our community. When we founded SDAG as a nonprofit in 2023, we did it in hopes of encouraging these same empowering connections for other disabled students. This forum is for any disabled college student or community member over 18. Ask your questions, share your knowledge, and learn from one another. Applications for our Campus Chapter and Affiliate Program cohorts for Fall 2024 are live now! Feel free to use this forum to ask any questions regarding those programs as well. Advocacy can take up a lot of energy, so even if you are unable to commit to either of our campus programs right now, please feel free to utilize this forum space as needed. The original executive board of the Students with Disabilities Advocacy Group at Georgia Southern in 2021

We'd love to get to know y'all better! Take a moment to say hi to the community in the comments. Some suggestions to include in your introduction: • Your name and pronouns • Your school or home state • Your relation to disability or lived experience (only if you feel comfortable!) • What brought you to disability advocacy? Here is my introduction for everyone! My name is Jill King, and I use she/they pronouns. I am a senior Psychology student at Georgia Southern University, based in Statesboro, GA (my hometown)! While I've dealt with psychiatric disability and ADHD my whole life, I developed chronic pain at 19 and became legally blind over the course of 6 months at 20. This, as well as my ADHD diagnosis, happened during my time as a college student. This sudden progression alongside the ableist, eugenicist rhetoric seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic pushed me into disability advocacy. The need for a new wave of disability justice advocacy was abudently clear to me. I am 22 now, and will be taking a gap year before starting my Masters in Clinical Mnetal Health Counseling. I look forward to hearing from y'all!

This is a space for members to chat, ask questions, and have casual open discussion about disabilities and our experiences! As always, this is meant to be a SAFE SPACE for everyone in it, so we will have a few group rules to make sure everyone gets the most our of this forum! Our forum rules are subject to change as time goes on, but we will notify all members when changes arise. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any rule suggestions for the forum as well! This can be done via out Contact page or via email (sdag.gsu@gmail.com) 1. Be respectful. You must respect all users, regardless of your liking towards them. Treat others the way you want to be treated. 2. What is discussed here, stays here. Gossiping and sharing personal stories/information of others with people outside SDAG will not be tolerated. Because of the nature of what can come up in discussions about disability, it is important to keep everyone’s emotional safety in mind at all times. 3. No ableism or insenstivity to the disabled community. SDAG is first and foremost a safe space for students with disabilities. We welcome able-bodied allies, but we ask that all non-disabled individuals keep this in mind when taking part in discussion and activities. 4. No unwarranted medical advice. No one in this forum should be giving others medical advice, regardless of educational background. We are all at different places in our Disability journey and all deserve this respect. 5. Reminder: Disability is not a monolith! Be aware of different lived experiences with disability! Because 1 in 4 people are disabled, our experiences are bound to vary widely. There is always more to learn in this community so always be open to that when talking in the forum. 6. Be aware of and utilize tone tags! Many in the neurodivergent community benefit from them, and can be particiualty helpful when interacting in online spaces! Learn more about tone tags at the following link: https://tonetags.carrd.co/