President Neil L. Rudenstine yesterday said increased funding may be a way to foster greater participation of women in Harvard athletics, but that more money is not necessarily the best answer.

"I'm all for having increased participation rates," Rudenstine said in an interview. "I think I'd want to know more about the reasons for the current situation before we decided how to solve it."

The president's comments came in the wake of a recent federal court ruling against Brown University for violating Title IX, part of a 1972 law that mandates "equal opportunity" for men and women in intercollegiate athletics.

In addition, Stanford University last month announced it would spend an additional $1 million annually on its women's sports teams in an effort to encourage equal rates of men's and women's participation in athletics.

According to the court ruling, Brown must restore its women's gymnastics and volleyball teams, which it had cut for financial reasons.

But Rudenstine said the court's decision does not necessarily have broad implications.

"The Brown case as I understand it was a rather specific situation...They chose [to cut] two men's teams and two women's teams, from their point of view to be equitable," Rudenstine said. "The court found that that was not equitable because there weren't as many women participating and I think there weren't as many women's varsity teams."

"Therefore, as long as there was not yet parity, you couldn't cut women's sports, but you could cut men's sports," the president continued. "So [the case should be viewed] in the context of the cut, rather than [as] a more general ruling about what constituted equity and parity."

But Rudenstine did not rule out the possibility of Harvard's adopting an approach similar to that of Stanford to equalize participation rates.

"It could be [a good idea]," he said. "It could be an experiment that works [or] it could be an experiment that doesn't work."

Currently, 35 percent of Harvard's athletes are women. Of the athletic department's budget, 32 percent is directed at women's sports, while 68 percent goes toward men's teams.

In an interview in February, shortly after the figures were made public, Rudenstine said he thought the funding distribution was fair.

And yesterday, Rudenstine reiterated that assessment, saying the discrepancies are largely explained by differences in travel and equipment costs.

"Those numbers have been looked at very, very hard, and as far as I can tell, the disparities are explainable in terms of these kinds of factors," he said.

"The participation rate is something that I think is not as easy to explain and I don't really know what the answer is there. I don't honestly think we are doing things that suggest to women that they shouldn't participate in athletics."

"If one wanted to do it right, I think we really would want to sample part of the attitudes as to how much of [the gap in the participation rate] was due to people's perceptions [and] how much of it was due to the fact that people were really just choosing to involve themselves in other kinds of activities at Harvard, rather than athletics," Rudenstine added.

The president defended the practices of Harvard's athletic department, as he has in the past.

"Before we decide that they've done something wrong, we ought to look at the whole track record and give them some credit for all the things they've done right," he said. "They really have been leading the pack and if there are still things to be straightened out, then we ought to try to figure out how to straighten them out."

But Rachel E. Lerner '93, a co-captain of the Radcliffe crew team, disagreed with some of Rudenstine's remarks last night.

"The figures that came out, that the spending on women is one-third of the athletic budget and the spending on men is two-thirds...says that women aren't getting equal opportunity," Lerner said. "I think you can't say that the numbers for women's sports are because of [a lack of women's] interest."

Lerner said she and another member of the Radcliffe crew team have organized a panel discussion on the Title IX law and the Brown ruling for tonight.

Lerner said the discussion, scheduled for 7 p.m. in Sever 113, will feature Katheryn Reith, communications director of the Women's Sports Foundation, Patty Flannery, an attorney who specializes in Title IX cases, women's lacrosse Coach Carole Kleinfelder, and several women athletes from Brown University