THE DESANTIS BRAND:

Until her teacher brought up her race, it had been an otherwise unremarkable American government class at Wharton High. One of Melanie Copeland's parents was Black, the other white. Her teacher, Todd Harvey, wanted to know what she put as her race on government forms.

What she should put, he told her, was "mutt."

Melanie struggled to process what was happening. Did her teacher really just call her a dog?

She remembers Harvey grinning, while she and other students sat stunned.

Mr. Harvey is a tall, mercurial white man who has taught in Hillsborough County Public Schools since the late '90s, after working as a salesman and briefly pitching in the minor leagues for the Kansas City Royals. He's spent the bulk of his career at Wharton High, which serves mostly students of color.

The impact of Melanie's 2017 encounter with Mr. Harvey has been lasting, proving so haunting she wrote her college admission essay about it. The summer after her high school graduation, she read a Tampa Bay Times story about Blake High mishandling sexual harassment complaints that later prompted the federal government to investigate.

Melanie emailed the Times.

"I thought I was the only one who had a serious problem with Hillsborough County trying to sweep things under the rug," she wrote.

What she didn't know is that students and parents had complained about Mr. Harvey since before she was born.

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