CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - Desperate for money to cover airfare to the national championships, the Harvard Classics, Harvard's top club basketball team, has decided to add “Department of” to its name in a strategic ploy for university funding.

Last week, the Classics beat out Boston College's team to win the regional championship and nab a spot at the National Club Basketball Association championships in South Bend, Indiana. But as a club sports team at Harvard, the group receives no funding—in fact, all team members must pay a tithe of 17% of their families' annual incomes to President Faust each fall in order for the team to be granted practice space—so the team could not afford airfare.

“It’s wild, but as soon as we became the Department of Harvard Classics, we immediately received $10,000 in cash from President Faust herself, along with a handwritten note that read ‘for books or whatever,’” exclaimed team captain Johnny R. Kelly ’18. “That’s enough to cover all of our team’s expenses for the entire season."

The Department of Harvard Classics has also begun referring to the head coach as "Dean of Athletic Endeavors and Hoop-ful Pursuits” and has started offering players the Hoopes Prize. Kelly noted that as soon as the team added the dean position and the prize, all of the team's grant requests to the Office of Student Life were retroactively approved.

In the wake of the change, the team has seen an uptick in support from the student body. “When people thought we were just a basketball team that played some pretty quality ball, we’d get 4, maybe 5 fans at each game,” player Paul T. Smith '19 admitted. “Now that people think there are Saturday morning stagings of ancient Greek tragedies at Lavietes, floods of people have been getting up early for our games."