Cornell University has clarified that its dorm kitchens are for cooking food — not butchering bears.
The upstate New York university has now banned students from processing wild animals in shared residential kitchens after two students brought a legally hunted black bear into a dorm last fall and skinned it in a communal cooking space.
The incident occurred in September 2025, when students living in Ganędagǫ Hall reported seeing two classmates processing a black bear in the residence hall’s communal kitchen. Photos circulated among students and eventually reached Cornell University Police.
The students at the Ivy league university had legally hunted the bear off campus and brought it back to the dorm to process the meat, according to the Cornell Daily Sun. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation investigated but determined that no hunting laws had been violated, and no charges were filed.
The legality of the hunt, however, wasn’t the only issue.
Cornell temporarily closed the kitchen following the incident and had the space professionally cleaned before allowing students to use it again. Handling wild game can pose food-safety risks: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that raw or undercooked wild game, including bear meat, can carry trichinella parasites, which cause trichinellosis.
Nearly a year later, Cornell has made its position considerably clearer.
Under updated housing rules, students are prohibited from “skinning, butchering, or otherwise processing wild game animals” inside residential buildings. However, the policy still allows students to store and cook legally obtained game meat.
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The bear incident became something of campus legend in the months afterward. The Cornell Daily Sun even published a satirical guide in April titled “How To Skin a Bear in Your Dorm’s Kitchen” and an sardonic commentary how people have “spotted the ghost of a bear” haunting campus.
There is one final bit of irony: Cornell’s longtime unofficial mascot is Touchdown the Big Red Bear, a tradition dating to 1915, when the football team once adopted a live black bear. Its current incarnation is a student in a big red bear costume performing at sporting games.
More than a century later, Cornell apparently still has bears turning up on campus — though university officials would now prefer students not butcher them in the dorm kitchen.
Cornell’s new dorm policy means students hoping to recreate the episode will now have to take their bear elsewhere. For everyone else sharing the kitchen, that’s probably one less thing to worry about when making dinner.
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