New Serbian club leader and founder, Anastasija Tesic ‘27, was slightly nervous while she stood in front of the rest of the club, but was overcome by pride. She felt immense joy and was proud of what she had created. With scissors in hand, excited, and ready to cut the ribbon, she smiled at the cameras as she waited to start the first ever Serbian club at LT on March 14.

“It was very exciting and it made me very proud to have the first opening of the club,” Tesic said. “I’m very happy that I started this and we can show our culture, express our language and do activities.”

The journey to get the club approved and start meetings was long, it took about four months for it to get approved Kristi Gabriel, Serbian club sponsor, said. 

“It has to go through committees of people, there’s a test year and if you gain enough publicity they will vote again the following year,” Gabriel said. “We had to have made an impact the first year to be approved.”

The idea to start the club was from wanting to have their own community, leader/founder Stefan Majstorovic ‘26, said. 

“There are a lot of Serbian kids at LT and I just thought why don’t we have a Serbian club, and there so many other culture clubs so we thought it would be a good idea to start one,” Majstorovic said.

There are many different ethnicities within LT and a large portion of students are Serbian, Gabriel said.

“We actually have a large Serbian population here but no one would know that. Some kids are from Serbia and moved here this year or last year and a lot of them actually know each other from their old communities back in Serbia,” Gabriel said. “I think it’s interesting that we have a lot of immigrants at our school and no one really thinks about the Serbian kids.”

But the idea of forming Serbian club has a deeper meaning than having a community, Tesic said. 

“My parents are immigrants from Serbia and most of the Serbian kids from LT have the same situation. I would tell my parents, because I take French, that there is a French club and other culture clubs, and they said that I should start a Serbian club,” Tesic said. “So me and Stefan came together and decided to start the club. Most of the motivation to start the club was from our parents because they told me ‘you shouldn’t be afraid to express your culture with other kids.’”

Family helped influence the decision to create a Serbian club too, Gabriel said.

“Much of my Serbian family has passed away and I’ve lost some of the culture,” Gabriel said. “This club is a good way to gain some of that back, honor my mom and grandparents.”

The club has barely started and is still on its journey of developing, Majstorovic said. 

“I think it went pretty well, there’s always stuff that can improve but for the first meeting I thought it was pretty good,” Majstorovic said.

During the first meeting they did a lot of different things for fun and to introduce the club, Gabriel said. 

“I didn’t even ask, but we had parents that came and brought homemade Serbian food, which was nice,” Gabriel said. “We listened to Serbian music, we introduced ourselves, talked about the goals of the club, played a Kahoot about the culture, learned new words and took a survey for future plans and events.”

The Serbian club has some big plans for the future and is already participating in LT events. They participated in LT’s culture club on April 12 where they showcased different foods, artifacts and even a dance named kolo where Tesic is a dancer. The Serbian club hopes to get more funding from the school and do fundraisers in order to have field trips to places like authentic Serbian restaurants or to buy T-shirts for the club, Gabriel said. They hope they can get enough money to see a Bulls game, where a lot of the players are Serbian, or maybe even take a trip to Serbia, Tesic said.

They also have a goal for expanding the club, not just field trips.

“Our goal is to get as many people from both campuses to join, expand our culture, and get everyone else to know about the Serbian club and the culture,” Tesic said.

With only the first meeting, the Serbian club was able to have many students that attended who really enjoyed the club, Majostirivic said.

“Everyone said that they loved it and it was amazing,” Majstorovic said. “I like it, I’m proud of what we’ve done so far and I’m optimistic on what we can become.”