Not long ago, Stacey Kabat ā€™85 was talking with a friend, a longtime reporter for The Boston Globe, about the infamous case of Jared Remy, the serial abuser in Massachusetts who ended up murdering his girlfriend in 2013.

Stacey Kabat ’85 talks to students in a film theory course taught by Jonathan Cavallero, assistant professor of rhetoric. She brought her Academy Award, saying, “It’s fun to hold it, so I always feel like sharing.” Students passed it around and, yes, it’s heavy. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

They talked about how everyone around Remy ā€” the courts, police and social systems ā€” had failed to protect the victim.

Kabat and the reporter agreed: ā€œIt felt like we were right back in the 1990s,ā€ she said, a time when activists like Kabat were lighting a fire under the problem of domestic violence and reporters covering their work were helping to put it on the national agenda.

Kabat related the anecdote during her visit to campus earlier this week, including a public talk on Sunday and visits to two classes on Monday taught by Assistant Professor of Rhetoric Jonathan Cavallero.

“Defending Our Lives” won the 1994 Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject.

In Cavalleroā€™s class on film theory, Kabat talked about how the early 1990s were heady times on the domestic violence front.

In 1992, she won a Reebok Human Rights Award for her efforts with abused women, including work to found the nonprofit Peace At Home.

In 1994, she was part of the team that won an Academy Award for the documentary film Defending Our Lives that exposed the severity of domestic violence in the U.S.

A year later, Kabat presented at the NGO forum during the United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Beijing.

Kabat, who was just in her early 30s, was already dubbed a ā€œveteran laborer in the vineyards of social justice,ā€ wrote the Los Angeles Times.

ā€œThings were snowballing, steamrolling. We were moving and changing,ā€ Kabat said.

In Cavalleroā€™s class, Kabat screened the 1998 documentary Strong at the Broken Places, for which she was a co-producer.

Listening to Stacey Kabat ’85 are Rosy DePaul ’17 of Los Angeles, Mark Charest ’15 of Westbrook, Maine, Nora Kenny ’17 of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Gerald Nelson ’17 of San Antonio, Texas. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

A follow-up to Defending Our Lives, the film tells the story of four people, Arn Chorn-Pond, Max Cleland, Marcia Gordon and Michael MacDonald. Each survived horrific violence in their lives and used their experiences to help other victims of violence and to create powerful new identities for themselves.

Cleland, who would become a U.S. senator from Georgia, lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam after a hand grenade exploded in his hand.

ā€œI lay there shattered and dying,ā€ he says in the film. Heroic efforts ā€” a team of five physicians, hours in surgery and 43 pints of blood ā€” saved his life. ā€œThat, it turned out, was the easy part,ā€ he said. ā€œYou face a stark reality. You will never be the person you were, yet you donā€™t know who you will be. You donā€™t know you the hell you are.ā€

The film has a more hopeful story arc than Defending Our Lives. With terrifying personal testimonies and graphic photographs of domestic violence by photojournalist Donna Ferrato, the film was ā€œlike a grenade,ā€ Kabat says, that blew open the topic of domestic violence.

ā€œIt was radical,ā€ Kabat says, to show Ferratoā€™s images. ā€œIt was so different. No one had yet been able to expose visually this hidden family secret.ā€

So what happened to shift the national gaze from domestic violence?

“I’m not a cynical adult because I know that change can occur,” says Stacey Kabat ’85. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

Bill Clinton, who signed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 and talked about growing up in a violent home, lost credibility after Monica Lewinsky. Then, 9/11 and resulting wars forced Americaā€™s attention away from the domestic agenda.

When she was 18 and heading to ĄÖ²„“«Ć½, ā€œdomestic violenceā€ wasn’t a word, Kabat has said. She had been raised in a violent home but there was no way to talk about that in college.

In the 30 years since then then, “Iā€™ve gone from being ashamed and not be able to talk about it, to being able to talk about it and create programs of change and seeing people change and develop. Itā€™s amazing.ā€

Today, as Kabat sees example after example of Americaā€™s violent streak (such as the NFLā€™s clueless initial reaction to Ray Rice beating his wife), she is ā€œappalled. Itā€™s frustrating. We should be done with this already.ā€

“But I thought [the Oscar] would help the violence to stop.”

She says that America, notwithstanding the current ā€œItā€™s On Usā€ campaign and other efforts, has yet to ā€œtake hold of the issue and address it in a concrete, prioritized way.ā€

And thatā€™s the bittersweet legacy of winning an Oscar.

ā€œIt did bring clout to the issue and put a stamp on it that said, ā€˜This is important,'” says Kabat, who soon after delivered the commencement address at Simmons College, won a number of awards and traveled the country speaking and showing Defending Our Lives for a couple years.

“But I thought [the Oscar] would help the violence to stop. That was the naive kid in me.ā€

Sarah Koe ’16 of Portland, Ore., listens as Kabat talks about her career trajectory as an activist. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College)

Today, Kabat is 51 and has two children, one in high school and the other 8 years old. And if sheā€™s no longer laboring in the vineyard, sheā€™s still in the field. Transitioning from running her nonprofit, Peace At Home, she is now a maternal/child health nurse and a lactation consultant at Mass General.

ā€œAfter 9/11, it was so hard to receive aid for what we were doing,ā€ Kabat says. ā€œI couldnā€™t be fundraising, working, speaking, counseling. It was too much. You can only do 20 years of that. My husband said, ā€œStace, the Beatles only had 10 good years.ā€™ So I feel OK!ā€

Sheā€™s no longer that naive kid but Kabat still has fire in her belly. ā€œIā€™m not a cynical adult because I know change can occur,ā€ she says.

It comes from ā€œyour actions with people you meet every day. How you interact with your peers, how you interact in your community, how you choose what you want to speak out on, how you vote and how you get involved.ā€

The best example is right in front of you, she said.

ā€œĄÖ²„“«Ć½ was founded by abolitionists. And thereā€™s a reason for that. They wanted us to think about being part of social change.ā€

Stacey Kabat, class of 1985, received the Alumni Community Service Award, and Norma Crooks and Richard Coughlin, class of 1952 and 1953, respectively, received the Helen A. Papaioanou Distinguished Alumni Service Award.The Benjamin Elijah Mays Medal is given only when ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ wishes to honor an alumnus or alumna who has made extraordinary contributions to America and to worldwide society. This award was established during Maysā€™ lifetime, and he was the inaugural recipient of the award in 1982. Other recipients have included Edmund Muskie, class of 36; Frank Coffin, class of 1940; Vincent McKusick, class of 1944; and Peter Gomes, class of 1965.

John A. Kenney was born in Tuskegee, Ala., where his father was physician to Booker T. Washington and George Carver. He earned his bachelorā€™s degree from ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ in biology and chemistry, and a medical degree in 1945 from Howard University School of Medicine, where he later became a member of the faculty.

For more than 25 years Kenney served as chairman of the department of dermatology at Howard, a medical consultant in dermatology to the Department of State, an officer of national medical associations and trustee of ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ College for 23 years.

The Distinguished Young Alumni Award recognizes recent graduates who have given distinctive service to the college or have achieved distinction in their careers. A native of the Lewiston-Auburn community, Sally Ehrenfried majored in political science at ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ and, after graduation, took a position on then Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s staff. After Mitchell left public office, Ehrenfried served both Republican and Democratic senators from Maine and currently serves as the personal assistant to Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. But, every Thursday afternoon, she works as a reading tutor in a Washington D.C program called Everybody Wins, a commitment Sally has maintained since the program’s founding six years ago.

Winner of the Alumni Community Service Award, Stacey Kabat, graduated from ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ in 1985 and, nine years later, she won an Academy Award for co-producing and co-directing “Defending Our Lives,” a documentary which portrays the terrible choices faced by battered women. A survivor of an abusive home as a child, Kabat came to ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ and found, in her words, “some amazing human rights activists.” She has spent the fifteen years since graduating working with battered women and for human rights, receiving worldwide recognition for her efforts. She was awarded the 1992 Reebok International Human Rights Award for raising consciousness that acts of domestic violence are violations of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Kabat used the $25,000 Reebok prize to found Peace at Home, a not-for-profit organization devoted to stopping domestic violence. She also received the Clara Barton Award from the American Red Cross for outstanding dedication to easing human suffering.

Each year, the ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ Alumni Association recognizes an outstanding graduate or graduates for their distinguished service to the college. Historically known as the Distinguished Alumni Service Award, the 1999 award was renamed the Helen A. Papaioanou Distinguished Alumni Service Award, to honor Helen Papaioanou, class of 1949, M.D., for her decades of service to ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ and to the board of trustees from 1965 to 1999.

In the nearly five decades since their graduation, Norma and Richard Coughlin have served ĄÖ²„“«Ć½ tirelessly. The Coughlinā€™s have served as class president, alumni class officers, reunion volunteers, club officers, College Key and campaign and leaders trustees. In 1987, they established the Richard F. Coughlin and Norma Crooks Coughlin Scholarship Fund, to benefit needy and deserving students.