Follow Up to Breaking News...

By request, below is the letter published in its entirety since it was previously made public:

To Kris Marley

May 31, 2019

From the SLSA Board of Directors.

Dear Kris,

We are writing to you regarding your behavior most recently and also throughout your membership in SL Surfing Association over the last few years. Pretty much, Kris, from day one you began to cause issues. Yes, while you have also tried to help by offering your time and energies, unfortunately the negative points of your personality and actions often overshadow the good you have done.

Our community along with the SLSA directors have given you chance, after chance, after chance to improve your attitude, but you always come back doing something to stir up trouble and act disrespectful to others which in turn hurts our members and our community as a whole.The purpose of this group is to have fun and share the love of surfing and no one should be harassed in any way, and belittled to the point of quitting or withdrawing from events that they like. Being a member and a former director you should be setting a good example not causing the problems that we have faced currently and in the past by you.

You continue to be disrespectful to some of the current directors.  Also, after the display you showed at the surfing comp on May 18, 2019, being rude to staff members when they went out of their way to help you get your heat changed to a later one, to threatening to cause trouble at our SLSA forum, your actions showed to be that of someone very disrespectful. This tipped the scales and now we feel what you need is some sort of structure with reprimands to help you to become a more positive member of our community. Sometimes people don'thave the self discipline to do it on their own and they need help. Sadly we feel this is the case with you, Kris.

We will set out some strict guidelines for you to follow. If you violate this, your sanctions will be increased. We expect our members to be respectful of staff, the directors, as well as fellow members. You just don't seem to understand this. While we hoped you would improve on your own, that has not happened.  We feel you need some sort of consequence to your actions for you to realize that we are serious about this. It is not a joke.

And so regretfully we have decided to suspend you for theremainder of Season 1 2019. You will not be allowed to surf in the last competition of the season.You will not be allowed to host the last competition of the season. While reading this, we can imagine you are most likely very upset. Please try to keep your anger in check. If you lash out at anyone in our community, we will increase our sanctions for you.

We are sincere when we say we hope giving you some structure and letting you know we are serious will help you to focus more on making improvements with interactions you have with our members and staff.

Your suspension will start immediately and continue through season 2 2019 ending in December 2019 after the last competition. If you don't cause any other issues for ANY of our members between now and then, the board at that time will review your case and decide if you deserve to return to competing.

During this suspension your chat rights in our group will be banned, your account in the forum will be deactivated as well. You will not be allowed to be a part of staff. You will not be allowed to run for director of SLSA.

If at any time during your suspension you harass anyone in our community in any way, if any complaints come in about you, your suspension will be added on to and a permanent ban will be considered.

If you create an alt to enter competitions or to be event staff or any other official position in SL Surfing Association and we find out, that alt along with your main avatar, KrisMarley, will be permanently banned from SL Surfing Association. We will not tolerate any game play of that nature.

Because of the seriousness of some of your actions that you were involved with while you were a director during three separate terms, the SL Surfing Association Board of Directors feels that you are not responsible enough to hold a seat on the BoD at this time. We are giving you a minimum of a 5-year suspension from being on the BoD to a lifetime ban. Unless you can really clean up your act and become a positive member who is respectful of others, the BoD feels you should never hold this position again. However, we realize in some cases people can make a change for the better. This is the reason we are leaving this open slightly. If in 5 years time there is a BoD that feels you have improved yourself enough to be responsible to hold the position, then it will be up to them

to decide whether or not to allow you to run. Until that time you must serve a minimum of a 5-year suspension from holding a seat on the SL Surfing Association Board of Directors.

Why five years? We feel you need the time to mature as a person and the time to spend focusing on your behavior. Positive changes don't always happen overnight. They can take much time.

Below you will find a list of actions you committed which is the basis of our decision to sanction you at this time along with the rule breaks that pertain to these actions. It is a list of actions starting with the most recent and working to the beginning of your membership in 2016. If you feel that our decision to suspend you is unfair or harsh, please read through this list and ask yourself what you would have done. When you were a director you were harsh at times. One time a member was irritating in chat one afternoon and you banned them permanently on your own without consulting with other directors first. You said you expected the ban to remain.

You were given so many chances, Kris, and you only came back to cause more issues. It's really a shame that you have not learned to conduct yourself in a mature and responsible way. We do hope you will take our words seriously and try to improve yourself not only for our community but for yourself as well. Thank you. We sincerely hope you learn from this and return more responsible and mature. Please think about the things we've said. We hope to see you back competing in 2020 as long as everything goes well.

List of Actions which has led to our decision to impose discipline on you at this time:

1. Most recently you have been rude and harassed a current director.

2. At the competition on May 18th you were rude to staff members during your heat. Staff members had gone out of their way to get your heat changed that day so that you would not miss the competition. People did not HAVE to do this. They did it because they cared that you may miss the competition. In return, you were rude to some of our staff members on and off the water that day. You also threatened to cause trouble at the SLSA forum afterward. It's unacceptable for you to act this way, Kris. We had been hoping that you were trying to be a more positive member of our group. We were trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but again and again you keep proving us wrong. This was the last straw so to say.

From SLSA Code of Conduct:

2. Griefing (spamming) judges, officials, event staff or other competitors

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3. In March, you went to the head judge after a competition to badger her and insult her on the judging job for the competition. We have a rule which you knew about against contacting judges after comps about the scoring and you did it anyway. You could not stop from giving the head judge your insults. You spoke in a way in which you belittled her intelligence and skill as a judge. She had told you she wanted to stop the conversation mid way. You said okay then came back with, "but it stunk." And that started up more by you. The rule we created was to protect judges from the type of harassment you exhibited that night toward a head judge.

15.2 Appeals for score check

Post heat appeals can be made ONLY to the Event Coordinator if the surfer feels that there may have been an error calculating their score, or they were disqualified unfairly. Scores will be checked and the surfer notified of any correction or otherwise.

15.3 Post Comp Score Inquiries

Following the close of the event, post comp score inquiries can be made ONLY through the EC (if the EC is a Director) or one of the other Directors. At NO time may a surfer contact judges directly regarding their scores.

You are only allowed to do a score inquiry regarding your own scores. You are not allowed to contact judges to tell them they judged wrongly, don't know the judging criteria, or insulting them in any way on the judging job they did. This is an offense that may be punishable by a disqualification for that competition.

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4. You harassed a director when she posted a notice for applications for Competition venues. You accused her of posting the notice on purpose at that time because you and others from the community were at a wedding. It was uncalled for you would do that and assume a director would do such a thing.

From LL member guidelines:

Harassment

Given the myriad capabilities of Second Life, harassment can take many forms. Communicating or behaving in a manner which is offensively coarse, intimidating or threatening, constitutes unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors, or is otherwise likely to cause annoyance or alarm is Harassment.

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5. On election day December 1, 2018 you used the SLSA avatar Surf Rang to harass one of the candidates. This is unacceptable behavior of a sitting director. They should never be using SLSA avatars to do something of this nature. Your promised that you would be around with your friends for 6 months insinuating that there would be trouble.

From LL member guidelines:

Harassment

Given the myriad capabilities of Second Life, harassment can take many forms. Communicating or behaving in a manner which is offensively coarse, intimidating or threatening, constitutes unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors, or is otherwise likely to cause annoyance or alarm is Harassment.

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6. Just after you left your position as director of SLSA, there were reports that you were sending inappropriate sexually explicit pictures of your RL self to members of Second Life during your term. This is not something that is acceptable behavior especially by a leader of our organization. Members were very upset to hear of this behavior by you. We lost some of our members because of these actions of yours. You were asked about it by one of the

SLSA directors and you would not deny you did this. Your actions put a very bad light on SLSA and tarnished a good reputation it had that was created by many decent people that put a lot of their time and effort into building a good organization over many years. Whether or not there was a formal complaint does not negat the fact that it happened and that as a result the good reputation of SLSA was tarnished and people were hurt by your actions. We could have banned you from SLSA but we instead gave you another chance.

1.3.3. Termination of membership. The sitting SLSA board of Directors is granted the authority

to remove any member from the SLSA in a board vote with no more than one dissenting director.

The authority shall be exercised, in cases where:

1.3.3.1 the reputation and mission of the SLSA (not the board) is compromised or publically

slandered or libeled.

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7. A member put in a complaint at our forum that you made unwanted sexual advances on her in SL Sadly we do believe her account. Afterward, her account said when she talked to you about it you threatened her that you would expose information about her to the public to hurt her if she told anyone about your behavior. This

is appalling behavior, Kris. It is morally wrong to do something like this.

From LL member guidelines:

Harassment

Given the myriad capabilities of Second Life, harassment can take many forms. Communicating or behaving in a manner which is offensively coarse, intimidating or threatening, constitutes unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors, or is otherwise likely to cause annoyance or alarm is Harassment.

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8.The night before a comp you griefed the Solace Dreams sim causing interference with surfers practicing that night. You were a director at the time not one of the regular members. You certainly should not have been instigating something of this nature during practice time before a competition. We received a complaint about

it because people had their practice time interrupted. Your griefing also caused issues with the SLSA stands and took hours out of the directors time to get it straightened out very late at night. We could have banned you from the Solace Dreams sim and you would not have been allowed to compete. Again, we let it go.

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9. Your first term as a director you helped to throw a photo contest/dance. At the dance you became angry that some of the older members did not show up. You went in SLSA group chat and told them off raging at them. You did apologize the next day and resigned your director seat saying with your alcohol issue you would be too damaging to SLSA. This attack in the group alone could have meant a permanent ban from our group according to our rules which would have also banned you from surfing. You were given another chance however. *(see forum guidelines below)

9a. Later at that same dance you paid a girl to strip at a sim that was not adult. You disrespected the rules there. You were in a director position that night and you put a very bad light on SLSA by doing that. When you are the face of SLSA doing something like this puts a very bad and lasting impression on SLSA.

1.3.3. Termination of membership. The sitting SLSA board of Directors is granted the authority to remove any member from the SLSA in a board vote with no more than one dissenting director. The authority shall be exercised, in cases where:

1.3.3.1 the reputation and mission of the SLSA (not the board) is compromised or publically slandered or libeled

You also broke LL rules. From LL Member Rules:

Indecency

Second Life is an adult community, but Mature material is not necessarily appropriate in all areas (see Global Standards below). Content, communication, or behavior which involves intense language or expletives, nudity or sexual content, the depiction of sex or violence, or anything else broadly offensive must be contained within private land in areas rated Mature (M). Names of Residents, objects, places and groups are broadly viewable in Second Life directories and on the Second Life website, and must adhere to PG guidelines.

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10. When you were a new member Kris you went off on another member in our group chat. You were warned to never do that again. You said you would not but as you read above you did that and worse. *See chat group guidelines below.

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11. There have been other various incidents. We did not list them all. Things like bullying members when they are trying to practice and at least one other abusive incident in our group chat.

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Chat Group Guideline:

This was posted in 2016 under Rules and Regulations at for the forum by Cierra as an explanation of group chat and its abuse:

I hate to have to even send this out... but group chat has turned into a free for all. Inappropriate language, behavior, discussions, and comments are being made, with the caveat "that's my opinion" as if that should make it okay. It's isn't. Group chat should be clean, fun and friendly. If what you have to say doesn't fit this criteria, take it to private chat.

Ignorance is not an excuse.

If intolerant behavior occurs, you will be given one warning, and if it continues, your group chat privileges will be revoked. If it is seriously offensive, inappropriate or turns into harassment, you may be subject to having your membership revoked.

If as a group we can not abide by these guidelines, group chat moderators will temporarily close group chat.

Simple rules - Be nice, or get off chat. If you have an issue, please come to a member of the Board of Directors, or address it privately..

Yes we all have a right to our opinion, and the right to disagree. We do not have the right to be abusive... and it will not be tolerated in group chat, official event local chat or on the forums.

***SLSA CODE OF CONDUCT***

Unsportsmanlike conduct (includes but is not limited to rude gestures and foul language directed at another competitor, official, judge, or spectator). Surfers should be fully aware that the definition of unsportsmanlike conduct is broad and they must conduct themselves in a sportsmanlike manner

((We generalize this to events, but all pertains to anything SLSA related.))

*** Community Standards of Second Life ***

All Second Life Community Standards apply to all areas of Second Life, the Second Life Forums, and the Second Life Website.

Intolerance

Combating intolerance is a cornerstone of Second Life’s Community Standards. Actions that marginalize, belittle, or defame individuals or groups inhibit the satisfying exchange of ideas and diminish the Second Life community as whole. The use of derogatory or demeaning language or images in reference to another Resident’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation is never allowed in Second Life.

Harassment

Given the myriad capabilities of Second Life, harassment can take many forms. Communicating or behaving in a manner which is offensively coarse, intimidating or threatening, constitutes unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors, or is otherwise likely to cause annoyance or alarm is Harassment.

Assault

Most areas in Second Life are identified as Safe. Assault in Second Life means: shooting, pushing, or shoving another Resident in a Safe Area (see Global Standards below); creating or using scripted objects which singularly or persistently target another Resident in a manner which prevents their enjoyment of Second Life.

Disclosure

Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Life experience. Sharing personal information about a fellow Resident –including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, and real-world location beyond what is provided by the Resident in the First Life page of their Resident profile is a violation of that Resident’s privacy. Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums.

Indecency

Second Life is an adult community, but Mature material is not necessarily appropriate in all areas (see Global Standards below). Content, communication, or behavior which involves intense language or expletives, nudity or sexual content, the depiction of sex or violence, or anything else broadly offensive must be contained within private land in areas rated Mature (M). Names of Residents, objects, places and groups are broadly viewable in Second Life directories and on the Second Life website, and must adhere to PG guidelines.

Disturbing the Peace

Every Resident has a right to live their Second Life. Disrupting scheduled events, repeated transmission of undesired advertising content, the use of repetitive sounds, following or self-spawning items, or other objects that intentionally slow server performance or inhibit another Resident’s ability to enjoy Second Life are examples of Disturbing the Peace.

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