His roommates wake up to find him sitting at the kitchen table doing homework, reading the newspaper or watching any type of political show with a coffee. Chris Hanner is definitely a morning person.

“He is always ready for the day,” said Matt McKeown, one of his roommates and friends since freshman year.

A finance and international studies major, Missouri Students Association vice presidential candidate Hanner has always been interested in politics. He said he started to get involved after seeing Barack Obama campaign in St. Louis in 2008.

He said he is the political expert in his family.

“Usually, if my parents want to know something in politics, they’ll come to me,” Hanner said. “I probably influence their voting procedure more than they influence me.”

Hanner said his passion for politics comes from his grandparents, and that his grandmother plays a big role in his life.

“Family is something that’s actually really, really important to me,” he said.

Hanner is from Fredericktown, a town of 4,000 people in southeast Missouri.

“It is far away enough to have my own space but also close enough to be able to go home,” Hanner said.

He said his first year at MU was a bit of a shock.

“Socially, Mizzou has changed me,” Hanner said. “There were so many things I had never experienced … a lot of identities.”

Hanner has been involved in MU organizations since his first week on campus. He has been chairman of the MSA Budget Committee, a leadership advisor for the Department of Residential Life and vice president of Tigers Advancing Political Participation. Hanner also spent three months studying abroad in China this summer.

“At first I got involved for my own development,” Hanner said. “I was scared that I would end up sitting in residence halls doing nothing.”

Hanner plans to go into investment banking after leaving MU. He is learning French and wants to work in the bank industry in Brussels, near the EU headquarters.

But although he is busy and often quite stressed, Hanner’s friends say he is a chill guy. Kiersten Kuc said Hanner is “the comic relief that everyone needs,” and that being able to be silly and serious in equal parts makes him such a good friend.

McKeown also mentioned how sassy and sarcastic Hanner’s humor is, and how they make a perfect blend in the “weird love for Mizzou” that they share.

“He does very well under stress, knows how to take a step back and calm down in tough situations,” Kuc said.

One of these ways is through cooking. His roommates said he frequently cooks pasta for them and listens to their problems.

“I’ll come out and he’ll be making salmon fillets with some weird sauce that I’ve never even heard of,” McKeown said. “And he has some weird obsession with cooking shows, reads cook books.”

Hanner said cooking helps him de-stress.

“I love that for meals we just have to stop, sit down and eat,” he said.