“To Prof. Chit Simbulan, who taught me about feature stories, stripteases & everything I needed to know about political reporting, thank you.”
This, written by a certain @chasingrach (one of her students, Rachel Hermosura), was just among the many tweets and statuses that caught the cyberspace in an outpouring of grief over the death of Professor Lourdes Estella “Chit” Simbulan.
Many of the professor’s former and current students took to online media to express their sadness over the incident, even as both the memorial service in Arlington on Monday and the tribute from the College of Mass Communication on Wednesday were packed to full of people who, at once in their lives, have been touched by Professor Simbulan’s mentoring.
On Twitter, user @barrycrus said that the professor was very “eloquent, smart, and motherly” and that he will miss her. Another user, @ariespigafetta, called her “one of the best persons who walked this planet” and thanked her for “sharing her gift” to students.
On Wednesday, UP President Alfredo Pascual released a statement on the professor’s untimely demise and praised her for upholding the highest ethical and professional standards in teaching and journalism.
Pascual also challenged his constituents to “give meaning” to Simbulan’s passing by taking road safety as an advocacy, lamenting that despite years of studies done on road transportation in the country, road safety measures remain “deficient and unsatisfactory”.
“How can we as a society have allowed conditions that cause road accidents, such as the mishap that took the life of Prof. Estella-Simbulan?” he asked, adding that we owe it to Professor Simbulan to get serious on the issue of road safety.
The contents of this post were retrieved from a Wayback Machine snapshot of UPJC’s old website dated Aug. 29, 2011, 03:40:21 GMT.
