Cornell Students Hunt Bear, Butcher It in Dorm

Two Cornell University students sparked campus controversy after they lawfully hunted a black bear, then brought its remains back to their dorm for skinning and butchering. The incident prompted a police report and an official inquiry over the weekend, though university officials say it was legal under state regulations, per NBC News. The undergraduate students, found to have cut up the 120-pound animal inside a campus residence hall on Saturday, hold valid New York state hunting licenses and were not found to have violated state law or any other rules, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Cornell determined the students also stayed within the boundaries of the Student Code of Conduct, which "does not appear to address animal carcass transportation and processing, or the storage of raw meat," per the Ithaca Voice. The outlet notes a photo of the dorm shared on social media showed the remains of a small, apparently young bear laid out on a table. The image apparently struck a nerve at the university, whose unofficial mascot is a bear known as Touchdown. "No one has seen Touchdown lately," one student joked, per the Voice. DEC noted the bear was not killed near the campus in Ithaca, but within a large area known as Region 4, covering several counties east of Cornell.