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I have spoken with everyone and every expert I can think of to best understand the problem of the elimination of wrestling programs and wrestlers. I have come to the following conclusions:

1. THE PROBLEM - We can blame lots of people, organizations and groups, (there are lots of scapegoats out there); but in the final analysis, when we "control" for every other variable, wrestling will be extinct (I think) just because of "proportionality" alone. (Proportionality is the doctrine imposed by the Department of Education that participation ratios must mirror enrollment ratios. This means simply that if there are 53% females enrolled nationally [which is presently the case], about 53% of the athletes must be female. Wrestling can not co-exist with proportionality.)
2. MY REASONING - The rationale for my position is fairly simple but I think unimpeachable.
   • The Disparity is Huge. There are about 190,000 male athletes at the college level and about 110,000 female athletes. There are about 6,000 wrestlers.
   • Administrators are Predisposed. Assuming that almost every educational administrator now believes that every school must "get proportional," the athletic participation numbers must -sooner or latter - be about the same for each gender.
   • Administrators are being harrassed. I think administrators want to accomplish this sooner, rather than later, so the problem does not keep arising in form of 17-year old girls wanting a new team.
   • Enormous displacements must occur. To achieve proportionality, administrators must eliminate about 80,000 males or add about 80,000 females. I find this number crunching virtually impossible to achieve without eliminating almost all of the 6,000 wrestlers. (Can you think of a way?)
3. THE SOLUTION - Proportionality must be, and can only be, abolished at the national level.
   • The best way would be if the administration would help us. That is obviously impossible. We have tried to work on very small compromises with the Department of Education for the past three years and Norma Cantu (the Assistant Secretary of Education) simply does not work in good faith at all. (I have lots of examples of this.)
   • The next way is to get proportionality abolished by the Supreme Court. We are now preparing briefs for the Brown University case. Brown is appealing their case to the Supreme Court (I think) with one issue sought to be decided - Is proportionality an unconstitutional quota. I think that if the Supreme Court takes the case, the Court will rule that proportionality is, in fact, an unconstitutional quota.
   • Finally, everyone can do what the militant feminists did to get their "rights" -- fight. Everyone can contact their Congressman, explain that wrestling has lost 450 programs, and tell them they must vote to abolish proportionality. Don’t take no for an answer. There are lots of great arguments. (I personally believe that the strongest one is that males participate in a non-scholarship capacity in almost twice the numbers of females. If the definition of "participant" could be changed and females required to walk on in the same numbers as males, the problem would be solved [but Cantu wouldn’t consider it]. In support of this position is the fact that there are about 7,000 male athletic teams and 7,000 female teams nationally). Get educated and speak up.
   • At the state and local levels we can mitigate the impact of proportionality by introducing legislation and rules that prohibit the elimination of male athletes to achieve proportionality.

Many of the above require some elaboration for understanding. And I have explained a number the points in numerous articles, some of which have been printed by WIN Publication, which most of you are familiar with.

Dale Anderson