Haley Ferguson attended the March 4 joint session of Congress as one of First Lady Melania Trump’s special guests. A Middle Tennessee State University senior elementary education major, she represented the foster community through her Melania Trump-sponsored Fostering the Future scholarship, bringing awareness to the foster care and adoption systems.

While searching for scholarships and financial aid, Ferguson found Fostering the Future, a scholarship for people who were in the foster care system at some point in their lives. She said she rarely finds scholarships related to people in the foster care system. A couple of weeks after she applied for the scholarship, she received an email from Joe Bales, the MTSU Vice President for University Advancement, who asked if she wanted the opportunity to meet Melania Trump.

At first, Ferguson thought the email was spam, so she visited Bales in his office to learn more about the email, and he connected her to Marc Beckman, the CEO of advertising agency DMA United and the person in charge of procuring the First Lady’s special guests. Ferguson said she’s fairly disconnected from politics and didn’t know who Beckman was or his connections to Melania Trump and her foundation.

“I had showed up to the interview with him, and apparently, he’s like a really big shot person,” Ferguson said. “I didn’t know this going into it, so I showed up with rubber duck earrings and a ‘Sesame Street’ shirt. Most unserious thing ever.”

Ferguson believes that part of the reason the foundation chose her was because she showed up to the interview “being herself.”

The trip was nothing like Ferguson expected. After some media appearances, she took photos in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building — which is usually closed to the public — and took a tour of the West and East Wings of the White House.

She interacted with the First Lady and other special guests while taking photos. Though she did not meet President Donald Trump, she remembered being occasionally told off by the Secret Service for backing up a little too far during media sessions.

“I was sweating,” Ferguson said. “I was nervous. I was having to fan myself, and some of the corporals … they were [telling] me to not ruin my makeup from sweating. [Melania] was nice, though. She smelled good.”

At the joint session, she sat directly next to the First Lady after meeting Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, and waving “Hello” to Elon Musk. Melania Trump surprised her by asking about her major, and President Trump shocked Ferguson by mentioning her and her connection to the foster care community in his address.

Melania Trump helped Ferguson with the details of all the politics, pointing to the Supreme Court Justices and explaining who they were. The First Lady also explained why the Democrats wore pink as a sign of protest.

“‘Oh, those are the Democrats, they will not stand for him because he is a Republican, and they don’t stand for anything he does,’” Ferguson said, remembering what Melania Trump told her. “I just kind of giggled.”

Ferguson and Melania Trump chatted during the address. She told the First Lady about her support system and the clubs she was involved in at MTSU, like the Crochet Club. In turn, Ferguson asked Melania Trump about how she felt being in the public eye all the time.

“We were just talking a little bit about how the media can portray you as a certain way when they don’t really know you,” Ferguson said. “They’re kind of making it up based on assumptions. She said she doesn’t care really what the media has to say because they don’t know her.”

After MTSU posted on social media about her attendance, many users commented on the posts with support, while others claimed her attendance was an embarrassment to MTSU. Ferguson viewed it as a way to bring awareness to the foster care community and to serve as someone for foster care kids to look up to.

Ferguson said was happy to be chosen, no matter which political party she represented

“I just felt that I was able to shed a light on the foster care community,” Ferguson said. “Kids can see me up there, and they can see that their choices or where they grew up, they don’t have to become a product of them or like a statistic. They can overcome those challenges.”

Ferguson will graduate from MTSU in December and plans to move back to Spring Hill, Tennessee, to become a teacher. Her inspiration to become a teacher came from her experience in the foster care system. She wants to be a support system for kids who don’t have one at home.

“[I want to] be able to provide those students with basic necessities, like have a little corner in my classroom that has deodorants and a toothbrush,” Ferguson said. “Just different things that if I do notice a student is in need, I can provide that, no matter what. If they’re even in a bad living situation, I can provide that for them. Having those experiences [in the foster care system], I think, has given me a greater appreciation for just basic necessities being met because at one point, my basic necessities weren’t met, and that’s why I was in foster care.”

Ferguson’s professors supported her trip to Washington D.C. and worked with her on assignment deadlines. She said the people she’s met at MTSU, including professors, provide her with a support system that she’s overjoyed about.

“I don’t want to become a statistic, and I want to be the first person in my family to graduate from college with a [bachelor’s degree],” Ferguson said. “I just kind of want to break statistics and break stereotypes.”

This story was originally published on MTSU Sidelines on March 7, 2025.