Cornell Adds Bear Processing Ban After Dorm Incident

Cornell University has tightened its kitchen rules after the widely shared bear butchering incident in Ganędagǫ Hall, adding a clear ban on processing wild game in community kitchens. The new policy says, “Processing wild/game animals in community kitchens is strictly prohibited,” and the school said the change directly followed the 2025 episode that drew intense attention on campus and online.

The incident centered on two students who brought the carcass of a black bear they had killed into a dormitory kitchen for preparation. One of them, Aaron Chin, later identified himself on a podcast as one of the students involved. Chin said he and a fellow Cornell student had planned to prepare the animal at a friend’s house after traveling from hunting grounds about two hours from campus, but he claimed that arrangement fell through when the friend had an emergency. He also said they had checked campus rules before bringing the meat onto school property. “We were really diligent in reading all of the rules [and] regulations,” Chin told the MeatEater podcast in September. “We made sure we did everything by the book because we knew we were going to be under scrutiny.”

The Cornell bear butchering episode quickly became a flashpoint on social media and on campus, prompting concern about whether the students had crossed a line in using a residence hall kitchen for game processing. State regulators also looked into the matter. After an inspector from New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation visited the kitchen where the cutting took place, the agency found no code violations, according to an NBC report. That finding did not stop the controversy from lingering, and the university’s policy change now gives administrators a much firmer rule for future cases.