But will the prof serve cheese with the wine?

If College seniors Whitny Perkins and Zoey Chanin have their way, many seniors will be raising their glasses and offering a toast this coming spring. But it won't be at graduation. It will be in the classroom. Perkins, a dual major in Communications and Spanish, and Chanin, an International Relations major, are hoping to establish Penn's first wine-tasting class. After spending the spring semester in Madrid, both said they came to appreciate the social and cultural benefits of wine, and now they want others to enjoy it in much the same way. "There really is so much to the culture and the different types of wine, that once you get past the whole, OOoh, I get to drink' thing, it is really interesting," Chanin said. "It was just a fun experience, to be able to experience the culture in that way," Perkins added. The students are still figuring out how to petition for the class. Currently, they plan to approach administrators in the College of Arts and Sciences, and maybe circulate a petition among students. A wine-tasting class, Perkins and Chanin said, would teach students about the different ways in which wine is produced, distributed and consumed around the world, as well as the ways in which wine is integrated into different cultures. "[Wine] is pretty beneficial in more ways than one," Perkins said. "When we're older and want to go out, you want to be able to open up a menu and see what you're reading and know what you're ordering." Perkins and Chanin came up with the idea after hearing Perkins' cousin, a recent Cornell graduate, rave about a wine-tasting class she had taken her senior year. Cornell's School of Hotel Management offers a 900-person lecture in wine tasting -- complete with 21 teaching assistants -- taught by two professors and frequented by guest lecturers. Students who enroll in the class receive a wine kit and a textbook entitled Wines For Dummies. They must sign a waiver acknowledging that they are over 21 and will not hold the school accountable for any abnormal behavior after drinking the wine. Students are tested as in any full-credit course. Rutgers University offers a similar program, but unlike Cornell's -- where tastings occur at every lecture -- Rutgers students enjoy tastings only twice throughout the semester. Penn does offer a wine-tasting mini-course through the College of General Studies, but it gives no credit and students must pay $175 to enroll. The class, which is capped at 50, meets one night a week for three weeks at the London Restaurant downtown. "We think that even though this is a great thing, nobody knows about it. It's expensive, and it doesn't allow for many people to get involved," Perkins said. The two women said they believed a wine-tasting class would be very popular among Penn students. "I think it would be neat for students, I just don't know how tough it would be for the administration," echoed Wharton sophomore Marisa Forish. Perkins and Chanin acknowledged the issue of the administration's approval. "I guess it becomes a little bit trickier because of everything that's been going on with alcohol at this school," Chanin said. Still, they are hopeful that the administration, like those at Rutgers and Cornell, will look favorably upon their idea. "It's more of a cultural thing," Perkins said. "We certainly wouldn't be presenting it in a form of condoning drinking... and I think [the administration] would know what the benefits of a course like this were."