We expect our universities to be havens for ethics, not just academics; we expect them to cultivate judgment and conscience, not just grant degrees and high-paying corporate jobs. This past week, those ideals were skinned and gutted in a dormitory kitchen, alongside a dead bear.
On Sept. 6, two Cornell students killed a 120-pound black bear while on a licensed, legal hunt in Otsego, three counties east of the university. By itself, I take no issue with the hunt. Hunting has long been a legal and regulated practice, and within the boundaries of the law, the students were fully permitted to do so — although, you would think Cornell students might pause before hunting down the species that is their own mascot.
My real concern, however, begins with what happened afterward: They brought the carcass into their residence hall and began skinning and butchering it in a shared dormitory kitchen.
A university dormitory is not a private cabin in the woods. It is a shared space where hundreds of students live, eat and build community. Kitchens in these spaces are designed for preparing meals — for reheating leftovers, cooking pasta or baking cookies with friends. They are not designed to be abattoirs. When students decide to treat them as such, they impose not only the mess and smell of raw butchery on their peers, but also a sense of disrespect for the shared standards that allow communal life to function.
According to The Cornell Daily Sun, the University spokesperson, “had valid New York State hunting licenses used to hunt and bring a bear into Ganędagǫ: Hall over the weekend.” They also informed The Sun that even though a police report was made, no charges have been filed against the students. Neither The Sun nor the University have made any further comments on the incident.
By focusing on whether the hunt was legal, much of the public response has overlooked what really matters here: the breach of community trust and judgment that followed. Legality sets the floor of acceptable conduct, not the ceiling. There are countless things that one can legally do but that would still be wildly inappropriate in a university setting. Dragging a freshly killed bear into the kitchen is, needless to say, included.
Universities, especially prominent institutions like Cornell, are not simply places to learn academic material. They are communities designed to prepare students for adulthood — for workplaces, neighborhoods and civic life where judgment and respect matter as much as technical rules. To reduce this incident to legality alone is to miss a crucial teaching opportunity.
Yet, by framing the issue primarily in terms of whether the hunt itself was within the bounds of the law, the university risks signaling that technical compliance is the only standard students are expected to meet. That would be an abdication of one of higher education’s core missions of responsible citizenship. The real lesson here is that leadership requires knowing not just what one is allowed to do, but what one ought to do.
The danger is not that two students killed a bear. The danger is that a leading university might allow its community to think that legality alone settles the matter. The real test — for students and for institutions — is whether we can distinguish between what is permissible and what is respectful, responsible and wise.
Rohan Taneja is a member of the Class of 2028 and an opinion columnist for The Dartmouth. Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
