Students Launch 'Student Calls' Team: Expect a Call

Serbia’s protesting students officially launched a field team called “Student Calls” on Monday afternoon, tasked with phoning citizens ahead of the elections and talking to them about their support. The initiative was announced through the student movement’s official Instagram profile, marking its shift into a phase of direct, targeted voter mobilization.

The message introducing the team is short and personal. “We will call you soon. Let’s talk,” the organizers say, arguing that big changes begin with a single conversation. It is a new step in the student election campaign, which until now has centered on rallies, election monitors and street presence, without a telephone component.

What exactly does the ‘Student Calls’ team do?

Team members in the field are recognizable by their yellow vests, and they carry phones, stickers and badges. Their task is simple in form but demanding in scale: to make personal contact with as many citizens as possible and open a conversation about turning out to vote and about the students’ demands.

The students insist that this is a conversation, not a one-way message. Citizens, they say, should expect a call and a chance to ask questions, raise objections or simply hear what the movement is asking for. That moves the student campaign from the square into everyday communication, into a space long held by established parties with their call centers and voter databases.

The way the team was introduced also reveals the movement’s internal logic. Instead of promising a quick turnaround, the students repeat that elections are not won in a single day, but on every day before it. That message is aimed at their own ranks as well, because phoning citizens in the field requires discipline, stamina and a network of people ready to repeat the same conversation for days.

Why does this move matter before the vote?

Introducing telephone mobilization changes the character of the student campaign. Until now, the movement drew its strength from the size of its rallies and its visibility on the street. Phoning citizens is a different tool, quieter but potentially more precise, because it targets the individual at home and asks for a concrete answer: showing up at the polls.

For the governing side and the opposition alike, the emergence of an organized student calling network raises a new question. The students are acting as an independent factor, outside existing party structures, but with a tool that has so far been reserved for well-resourced election machines. How established players respond to that competition for voters’ attention remains to be seen in the days before the vote.

For now, one thing is clear: the student campaign has entered a phase that tests its ability to carry a message not only to thousands in the square, but to a single person at the other end of a phone line. If your phone rings soon from an unknown number, would you pick up and hear what a student has to say?