“And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah” When Off The Clock (OTC) performed one of their signature songs at Bentley’s Annual MLK Breakfast celebration, I think every student at the EDR was proud to call OTC Bentley’s premier a cappella group. With their high quality, collaborative and innovative events, SP&E was delighted to announce OTC as January’s organization of the month, making them 50 points closer to winning the Org@Bentley Challenge and a $1000 grant for their group!
We were lucky enough to get an interview with three of OTC’s presidents; Eric Donovan (class of 2016),the group’s current president along with former presidents- Ian Thompson (class of 2016) and Anna Sharry (class of 2016), to find out more about their organization and how they got to where they are today.
We were surprised to learn that Off The Clock was founded in 2010 as a choir and only recently became an a cappella group — and a pretty fantastic one too! We decided to kick off the interview by asking them about their initial struggle based on our assumption that it was hard to start an a capella group in a business school, but our reasoning was quickly proved wrong when they told us that the group had no problem taking off and has grown naturally over the years. This past semester alone, they had 46 people audition!
Of course, there was a lot of hard work involved; they performed at Open House, Accepted Students Day and the Activities Fair in order to spread the word about their group.
Our curiosity to know more about their group’s success pressed as we asked them a few factors that fostered their organization’s name. Eric explained the group’s interest to collaborate with other organizations at Bentley such as FIRE for pub events as well as Fraternities for fundraising events.Ian and Anna went on to tell us that they recently performed at a karaoke event for juvenile cancer research, which they all really enjoyed. When we were on the topic of things they enjoyed, we hoped to get some favorite songs out of each of the presidents. Their answer was pleasantly surprising when they told us they enjoy trying new songs all the time and they have a fun team process of choosing songs, where they pick a few and then vote as a group!
With their growing success, OTC has been increasingly performing off campus, so we decided to end the interview by asking them what it’s like performing off campus versus on campus. They told us about the exciting retreats they have been to at Syracuse and Vermont but that there was nothing like performing at their home turf in front of familiar faces. Goes to show, there’s nothing like the Bentley Community.