Public Service Beyond the Label

Larry Wesley ’26 Politics major is very familiar with the center as a Public Service and Community Engagement minor, a 2025 spring semester USF in DC Fellow, and he is currently spending this summer in Sacramento as a McCarthy Fellow where serves as a intern at the Fair Elections Center. His time in D.C. was pivitol for Larry as a student, fellow and public servant working in the congressional office of Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-CA).  Here Larry reflects on that experience and how it led him to become a McCarthy Fellow in Sacramento. 

“You are not doing anything.”
“This is not helping.”
“Are you ever going to step up?”

These were the kinds of calls I took as a congressional intern, answering phones for constituents who were tired: tired of the inaction, the rehearsed statements, the politics. I wanted so badly to lift them out of that frustration, but all I had to offer were press releases and carefully worded responses. At that moment, I did not feel like a public servant. I felt like an answering machine.

Before I ever stepped into a congressional office, I had already learned how to move through different worlds. As a military child, I lived everywhere and nowhere, absorbing the cultures around me, constantly adapting, always observing. It taught me to listen before I speak, to understand before I assume. It gave me a lens to see identity not as a box to check but as a tapestry: complex, sacred, and always evolving.

That lens became even more important as I began navigating professional spaces as a young Black man. There is a weight that comes with that: being expected to code-switch, being seen before you are heard, carrying someone else’s idea of who you are. It shaped how I moved through Washington, how I carried the stories of people like me, and how I understood the power of being present in rooms where our realities are often abstracted.

During my semester as an USF in DC Fellow, I witnessed how easily institutions can grow numb to the people they are meant to serve. I sat in on hearings, drafted constituent responses, and watched how policy often moved forward without ever truly touching the lives it was meant to impact. I kept thinking about the woman who called and said, “Don’t send me another letter. Just do something.” And all I could do was sit there, stuck in the quiet prison of bureaucracy with no clear route to get her the help she needed.

That is what led me to become a McCarthy Fellow in Sacramento, where I could engage with change from the ground up. In the state capitol, I experienced a different kind of proximity, where decisions landed closer to home and voices had a more direct path to power. It reminded me that even when policy feels distant, its impact is deeply personal. It determines whether a family eats, whether a student stays in school, whether a man gets a second chance or another sentence.

Through my minor in Public Service and Community Engagement, I have come to see that service is not just about helping; it is about learning how to help well. It means holding your convictions in one hand and your humility in the other. It means understanding the histories that shape us, honoring the differences among us, and serving more than just those who look or live like you.

At a school like USF, where diversity is often visible in faces but not always reflected in ideas, I have wrestled with what it truly means to be different. To resist blending in for comfort’s sake. To think critically. To speak honestly. To ask hard questions. And to love this country enough to challenge it.

I have seen how public service can lose its way when it becomes performance instead of purpose. But I have also seen what is possible when it is rooted in presence, in listening, in truth. That is the kind of servant leader I am becoming—one who shows up, not for recognition, but to do the work that still needs to be done.

Learn more about McCarthy Fellows and your path to public service — HERE!