One Saturday last September, two Cornell University students plopped a bear carcass on a table in a communal dormitory kitchen and began to carve it up. They planned to make “black-bear pastrami,” as one of them described their plans later.
But soon after they put the raw meat in the freezer, a picture of the animal laid out on a camo-colored tarp with its hide stripped began to circulate on social media.
A complaint was lodged against the students and a police report was filed, yet they were cleared of all wrongdoing by the police and the university. Both had hunting licenses and the bear was killed legally, according to state officials.
Now, ahead of another school year, Cornell has expressly banned the processing of wild game in residential kitchens on campus.
Lindsey Knewstub, a spokeswoman for the university, said in a statement that the new policy was meant “to provide clarity regarding what is or is not appropriate to do in a communal kitchen space.”
There have been no other known instances of wild animals being processed in residence halls, Ms. Knewstub added.
For those students who would like to hunt, she said, “there are many certified vendors near and around campus who can work with hunters to process game.”
The school has not identified the two students, but Aaron Chin said he was one of them on a podcast. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Last year on Sept. 5 — the day before the beginning of black-bear hunting season — Mr. Chin said he and his friend, both Cornell students, packed their rifles and drove about two hours east of campus, located in Ithaca, N.Y., to scope out the countryside.
“We were like, ‘Tests aren’t going too crazy, academics are pretty chill — let’s get her done,’” Mr. Chin said on “MeatEater,” a hunting and outdoors podcast, a few weeks after their meat processing had gone viral.
The morning after their initial expedition, the pair shot a bear weighing 120 to 200 pounds near a pine grove in roughly the same area, according to state officials. They hoped to bring the carcass to a friend’s house near campus and make “black-bear pastrami,” Mr. Chin said on the podcast.
But on the drive there, they learned that their friend’s place was unavailable. So they settled on the communal kitchen at Ganędagǫ: Hall at Cornell — but not before reading through the school’s rules and regulations, Mr. Chin said on the podcast.
“We were really diligent,” he said. “We made sure we did everything by the book. We knew we’d be under scrutiny.”
As Mr. Chin and his friend carved up the bear in the first-floor kitchen, some of their peers were studying at nearby tables. Other students walked by and took pictures.
“Most people were really curious,” he said. “Like, ‘Hey, we’d love to try some.’”
“We were just explaining, like, ‘Hey, none of this goes to waste,’” Mr. Chin said.
When they finished packaging the meat, they wrote their names on the bags and stuck them in the community freezer, Mr. Chin said.
The next day, Sept. 7, the university received the complaint and the police report was filed, according to Ms. Knewstub.
Soon afterward, the picture of the bear with its hide stripped started appearing online. Several news reports followed.
“We thought we’d get yelled at by an R.A., maybe,” Mr. Chin said on the podcast, referring to resident advisers at dorms. “But we didn’t expect it to blow up to the extent which it did.”
On Monday, as classes resumed, Mr. Chin said a member of the administration reached out to check on him amid the onslaught of news. Later that day, maintenance employees worked to “fully sanitize” the kitchen and reopen the communal space, Ms. Knewstub said.
The university later determined that Mr. Chin and his friend had not violated the student conduct code or Cornell’s community living standards, and the police did not file charges.
Black-bear hunting season will begin again in some parts of New York on Sept. 12, but Mr. Chin said last year that he had no plans to bring another wild animal to campus.
“I don’t want part two happening. I was kind of asking for it,” he said on the podcast. “We’d probably do it in the woods next time.”
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