Our new Director of Development, Mr. Victor D’Ascenzo, feels right at home on campus – just as he did as Editor in Chief of this publication in 1981.

Cynosure is a word defined in the dictionary as a center of attraction or attention. In the early 1980s, the newspaper that dominated campus wasn’t the Inquirer, the Times, or even the Blackfriar Chronicle. In those days it was Cynosure that captured the hearts and minds of Malvernian readers.

In 1981, at the helm of the school’s respected newspaper, stood an ambitious senior by the name of Victor D’Ascenzo. Today, that same man continues to attract campus wide attention.

The school will always hold a dear place in Mr. D’Ascenzo’s heart, because of family history, being the third of four brothers to attend Malvern, and because of the things he learned here.

Along with the rich education Mr. D’Ascenzo received, he took a lot from his time as a three sport athlete, on the stage for theatrical productions, but most of all his job as Editor in Chief gave him first hand experience in managing a team, writing skills, proofreading, and time management skills.

The most tedious, yet rewarding task of Cynosure’s leader was to synthesize the responsibilities of his team to physically lay out the issues on pieces of paper, by cutting and pasting content by hand. When D’Ascenzo reminisces of his laborious responsibility, he fondly remembers “seeing the end product that other people would take, and they would read, and they would like, and they would dislike, everything we wrote people didn’t like.”

So Cynosure was definitely a lot more of hard menial labor but the result remains the same.

The staff of the BFC still feels the same as Mr. D’Ascenzo’s  “sense of satisfaction and excitement. On the day it comes it out you’re excited and your anxious. Will they like it? Will they read it? That’s the first thing. Will they actually take it of the stack?”

Another remnant of the dark ages of the early ‘80s is “the biggest issue, the typos.” It is a tad embarrassing that to this day, we face the same problems yet have all the power of SpellCheck at our fingertips.

Mr. D’Ascenzo returned home to Malvern last spring to assume the position of Development Director. And by home, he really means it. “Coming back for me was easy. I grew up in Malvern. Malvern has been a part of my life since 1973 when my oldest brother got here as a freshman. We used to walk to school, worked here in the summer,” said D’Ascenzo when asked what it was like to come back.

Taking the job as Director of Development means a lot to Mr. D’Ascenzo. He watched as his older brothers came home as a sophomore and freshman to share the news of what seemed to be Malvern’s imminent demise in 1974. Now D’Ascenzo’s biggest task is to lead B.A.S.H., the very fundraiser that saved the school he loved so much.

Mr. D’Ascenzo exhibits a lot of pride for his alma mater and for his job. He says he learned “to take pride” from his days as editor because when his name was out there on the paper, he learned to take responsibility.

As Mr. D’Ascenzo’s tenure continues, he will continue to bring attention to Malvern and better the school he loves. I am “cyno”sure of it.