BUZZ
Policy change prompted by 2 students who legally hunted bear, took carcass to dorm to butcher
Cornell University has banned the butchering of wild animals in its campus community living spaces after two students stirred up controversy last fall when they hunted a black bear and brought the carcass back to their dorm kitchen for processing.
The New York university, based in a rural southcentral region of the state, changed its policy this summer as a direct result of the incident, The Cornell Daily Sun reported recently.
“The policy aims to provide clarity regarding what is or is not appropriate to do in a communal kitchen space,” a university spokesperson told the student newspaper.
The change to the Community Living Standards policy is listed under a section about keeping shared kitchens “in a clean and sanitary condition.”
“Processing wild/game animals in community kitchens is strictly prohibited,” the new addition states.
An investigation found that the students hunted the bear legally, and the university did not discipline them, according to the report.
The incident took place last September and quickly drew backlash on campus and later online.
Aaron Chin, a junior at the time, and another unnamed student hunted the bear and then brought the carcass back to campus where they skinned and then processed the meat in a dormitory kitchen, the New York Post reports.
Later, on the MeatEater podcast, Chin explained that they initially had planned to take the bear to a friend’s house to butcher it, but an emergency situation came up that prevented them from using the home.
Chin said he and his friend checked on campus rules before they brought the bear to their dorm kitchen, and found that they would not be breaking any. He also said they needed to find a place quickly because they didn’t want the meat to spoil.
“We were really diligent in reading all of the rules [and] regulations,” Chin told the podcast. “We made sure we did everything by the book because we knew we were going to be under scrutiny,” including sanitizing the area with bleach afterward.
After their action became known, however, it resulted in a huge uproar — first on campus and then in the news media.
Cornell also shut down the kitchen “for two days” and had it “fully sanitized by staff from Cornell’s Building Care Department,” the student newspaper reports.
Chin said that because Cornell is located in a rural area with lots of forests, the campus has a “hunters community.” He said he and his friend did find support from some local officials and people on campus.
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