Hillary Clinton has been under the public spotlight for years. We have all known her name for as long as we can remember, and every time you hear it, you can be sure a debate is close behind. There is one thing for certain about Mrs Clinton in today’s America, you either love her or you hate her.

Now that she is running for office (again), the scrutiny has naturally been dialed up. Every day we see commentators going back and forth on her past as well as her policies for the future. We also see the data showing this presidential race’s historic high unfavorable ratings, 53 percent in Mrs Clinton’s case according to a recent Washington Post poll. When I talked to average citizens who dislike the former Secretary of State, a common thread in all their thoughts circulated around the current email scandal.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s hard to turn on the news without hearing about it and, whether you think it’s a legitimate scandal or not, just watching the debate on national television leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths surrounding Clinton.

But what do her supporters feel about this email frenzy?

Cassidy Chassagne is a junior at the University of Maryland and a member of Terps for Hillary, an activist group. Although she doesn’t speak for all Clinton supporters, she does capture the common message for many of them.

“I personally don’t believe Hillary Clinton was using her personal email account for any reason besides convenience,” said Cassidy. “She has said over and over and over again that she knows now in hindsight that she should’ve used two accounts. She thought this would be easier and in the long run, she was obviously wrong about this fact.”

Cassidy believes all of this outrage stems from the American people’s dislike of Clinton, and not from any logical facts.

“I think if it wasn’t for the fact Hillary Clinton is running for president and is extremely well known there would be no drama,” she explained. “People love to hate Hillary and want an excuse to continue that hate.”

But the point many critics make is that this personal email broke the law; that a high government official cannot have sensitive information on private server.

To counter this, Cassidy sites the 2009 National Archives regulation in place during Clinton’s tenure which required that “agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.”

In other words, the government should have all the records of the emails sent to and from the server. Cassidy claims this acknowledges non-governmental email accounts.

She also made a clear distinction in saying that Clinton was operating lawfully under the rules of her time.

“President Obama created changes restricting using of personal emails in 2014, Clinton left office as Secretary of State in 2013, and only used her account for unclassified emails” said Cassidy. “All of the emails that are listed as classified were not classified at the time she sent or received them. The DOJ and IG have made it clear that this was not criminal in nature as misreported by some press.”

Cassidy, as well as many supporters, are confident that this issue won’t affect Clinton’s chances at the presidency. In fact, she believes that having been in the spotlight for so long, Hillary’s past “scandals” are completely fleshed out and dealt with, leaving no surprises in them. And most importantly, in her view, they don’t give Trump the ability to exploit them in any meaningful way.

“In the end, Hillary supporters see her as an incredibly qualified person running for president because she cares about the people and this country” said Cassidy.

“We look past the media trying to distract us and make us focus on the built-up drama, and see the woman for who she truly is.”