Melissa Willes has $25,000 in student loans and no degree to show for it. Now she’s suing Westwood College for operating in Wisconsin without the required state approval.

Fred Machado, a wiry 18-year-old, walked across the Oregon High School stage at his graduation ceremony in June. Now he’s at a military facility 2,000 miles away, training to become a Marine.

Officials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say they defused threats from 125 troubled students, employees and area residents under a little-known program launched two years ago in response to deadly tragedies on college campuses in Virginia and Illinois.

But the program didn’t identify at least three individuals before they caused problems at Wisconsin’s flagship campus, including threats against a campus leader, a bomb threat and a murder near campus.

Nearly four in 10 Wisconsin elementary students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch last school year, and the proportion of low-income elementary students has climbed every year of this decade, according to state Department of Public Instruction data analyzed by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.