Senior Ben Hampson was a freshman when he sent an email to his friend Charles Skold, whom he met through the Tufts Christian Fellowship, asking if Skold was interested in joining a Christian a capella group at Tufts that Hampson wanted to start.
"As soon as Ben suggested making a group, I definitely wanted to join," Skold said.
Anchord, Tufts' only Christian a cappella group, began in January 2008 with nine members. Five of the group's original members still remain and, after this semester, all of the founding members will have graduated.
In fall 2008, Anchord became an official student group, and in 2009 it won the Office for Campus Life's New Organization of the Year Award.
Skold said the a cappella community at Tufts has always been very welcoming.
"It has been a very nice community to come into, and other groups have grown to respect us as we have stuck around," Skold said.
Senior Erin O'Donnell, another founding member of Anchord and the group's current manager, said the high quality of the a cappella community at Tufts has pushed the group to improve musically.
Christian a cappella groups at other universities around Boston, particularly Harvard's Under Construction, were a great source of help to the newly formed Anchord, according to Skold.
"[Under Construction] helped us through auditions and gave us our first music to sing," Skold said. "They helped us out a lot."
Anchord's purpose is to encourage conversation about Jesus Christ through the arts, according to O'Donnell.
"[The Christian nature of Anchord is] really the core of the group," O'Donnell said. "Ultimately, we feel that we are staying true to our mission statement; that is more important to us than concert turnout or having a great performance."
While the Christian nature of the group plays a large role in song selection, O'Donnell said it is not the deciding factor.
"All of our songs do not necessarily have a Christian message, but they do have a love message," she said. "God's love is something we want to reflect in our music, and hopefully pour out to other people."
Despite falling under the umbrella term of Christian a cappella, Skold said that Anchord's members come from a variety of Christian backgrounds, and even includes some members that would not even necessarily call themselves Christian.
"One of the interesting things about Anchord for me is that we have a variety of Christian faith in our group, from Catholic, Protestants, to even a few uncertain people, with all different levels of faith," Skold said. "In fact, the differences between the group members have been a source of creativity for us."
Both Skold and O'Donnell said that over the course of their tenure in the group, Anchord has grown immensely both in musicality and in numbers. The group currently has 17 members.
"The caliber of musicality has really increased," Skold said. "We are continuing to grow in what it means to be a Christian a cappella group through concerts and skits and what we talk about as a group."
O'Donnell has observed an immense growth in the skill and professionalism of the group, which is a result of hard work.
"Before, we had to fit Anchord into our busy schedules, but now we have to fit other things around it," she said.
O'Donnell says that for the first couple of years, when she would mention Anchord, other students would not know what she was talking about. By this year, however, she believes Anchord has become widely known across campus.
Anchord went to Break it Down Boston, a meeting of many Christian a cappella groups from the New England area, in its first year. Although they did not perform that year, it was so powerful to the group that they began to set goals around it.
"We watched and were really inspired," Skold said. "We saw where we had to go as a group. We left it saying it would be awesome to host it our senior year."
Anchord hosted this year's Break It Down Boston in Goddard Chapel in April.
Anchord also began recording this year, with plans to release a CD that will mark the group's beginning years.
Although after this semester all of the founding members will have left, both Skold and O'Donnell are confident about the group's future.
"I have a firm belief that the people who will follow will be more than capable of taking Anchord to new heights," O'Donnell said.
"It's amazing to be able to leave Tufts with a group that is going to carry on," says Skold. "It is nice to see something we worked toward, something that we saw as our mission, our goal and purpose on campus, become other people's goal and purpose and will carry on beyond our physical presence on campus."
