Pennying/ Formal Halls

During Formal Halls, students often bring copious amounts of wine to drink with the catered lavish meals that are provided by the dining staff. The event is very formal, as the name implies, and involves not only dressing up in a suit/tie, but also wearing a college gown (think shortened version of post-grad gown). Usually, there is an appetizer (either soup or salad) accompanied with bread, a main entree with vegetables (usually some sort of potato and a vegetable), and finally dessert with coffee. (On a side note: formal halls cost about 6 pounds/ ~$9).

Throughout the night, students attempt to penny each other's wine glasses. The process involves tossing a British penny into the other person's drink without them noticing or stopping you. Upon being pennied, the person must chug the entire glass without stopping. The origins of this tradition stemmed from the fact that the penny has an image of the Queen and that in order to save the Queen from drowning, the entire glass had to be finished. Other rules of pennying exist, such as pennying an empty glass, which requires the person to fill up a glass and finishing it again. Another interesting example is the engineer's penny, which is a bent penny that is used to penny an entire bottle of wine, so that the person who bought it must drink all of it. As such, by the end of Formal Halls, many people are quite tipsy or drunk. Nonetheless, the food at Formal Halls is usually quite good. In total, I've been to 6 Formal Halls: 3 at Emma, 1 at Peterhouse, 1 at Churchill, and 1 at Caius. Before the semester is over (in a month), I plan on going to Trinity , Selwyn , Emma , and Murray Edwards Formals and possibly even more!