When I was at college a several years ago, they had a class on Cobol. It was pretty bad going from two semesters of C++ and wanting to learn more to typing endless lines to get anything done. I went in and talked to the dean in charge and told him how I feel about Cobol and that the curriculum should be changed to include more modern languages. He briefly talked about how important programming concepts are and then sent me on my way. Several semesters later, they dropped Cobol for another semester of C++.
If you really want to change the curriculum, I feel that it's important to have a large portion of students along with you that feel the same way.
However, it is also important in knowing what the purpose of your school is in teaching you these languages. Are they trying to teach you concepts and theory that will be building blocks later on or are they trying to give you skills that will be applicable today and when you graduate? If you're trying to get a job when you graduate then maybe you could show the school the statistics for jobs using Perl and form an argument around that. If it's the concepts that are important then perhaps moving on to a fully functional language might be more useful in addition to having a semester of Perl.
