Phid, I'm just lookng at the incident itself and not the motivation (whatever that may have been).What I meant by someone from Hezbollah doing it is, he can do the exact same thing (same method, number of those killed), but his motivation would, I thnk, be more political therefore defined more as terrorism  I'm sort of thinking of a lone suicide bomber that drives his van into a school or something like.  Same results, different reasons.  But, yet, that would rightfully be called an act of terrorismThis shooting was a psycho incident more than anything.  I'm not implying that he was a terrorist or that this was a terrrorist incident, I'm just raising the question, if done by someone else like Hezbollah,  would it be defined as a terrorist act?Seems like it's a fine line between a criminal act and terrorism.  It depends on who does it I guess.

Wally is right, phsyco. But every time something like this happens they will try and read terro into it. sadly I'm sure the media was glad it happened, they love the ratings, Cho made them alot of money.

… certainly didn't help the world much by broadcasting the images all over like they did.  What better way to give some kid out there the impression that the killer went down in style.  Irresponsible, irresponsible.

I'm a middle school social science teacher; another of the mandates we have is a program called “Too Good For Violence”… and a feature of it is to try to debunk the media (news and entertainment) driven misconception that we are a violent society. The point of the program is two fold, to make kids aware solving things by violence isn't the norm and to emphasize ways to solve problems without (or before) violence is the answer. It shouldn't be necessary but the circus surrounding VT (yes we need to know but not all that has been reported) demands that we reply, “THIS IS NOT NORMAL!”Sooo, along with content standarts, character building, drug and alcohol education, AIDS awareness, health food choices, and all the rest we need to tell kids it's not normal to kill everyone in sight if you get teased or feel like you're left out.My view from the classroom,Wally

… really great idea, something which should probably be done at the high school and even college level as well.  “Given this set of circumstances, what better ways could he have handled the situation of being picked upon?”  Sounds like pretty basic stuff but evidently the basic lessons of living in a society where there is friction and people are mean to you does not get through to everyone.  Granted, it sounded like this particular kid had some mental problems, but I would be that even someone like him could have benefited from being exposed to alternative methods of responding to adversity. 

While I am in agreement, mostly, my concern is this should have (and used to be) gotten accomplished in the home. The schools have sooo many mandates that we aren't able to focus enough to be really effective. Society needs to realize the schools can't do it all.

I think at a time like this – right after a major incident – it's the best time for such as “teaching moment”….

Yes and I'm one who uses them; standards and NCLB don't make citizens out of our kids… teachers that make them think about their place and role in the scheme of things do. I'd rather make a good citizen than raise the test scores. [much to the dismay of some of the higher-ups in my dsitrict]Sorry to rant,Wally

to research facilities, a ski resort and other businesses

I don't think that should be considered terrorism.but this

toppling of a high-tension power line

is questionable.  Was this just a power line to Vail Ski Resort (grrr :x) or another business? Or was this a main power line for a population of people?I think an act would be defined as terrorism if they vandalized power plants or other utilities.