thursday, october 30, 2025
celebrating 122 years
free
BUILDING BACK BASKETBALL GUIDE 2025
city
ICE detains 2 Upstate employees By Kate Jackson asst. copy editor
Hercules Candy went viral on social media for its homemade candy, which comes from a family recipe dating back to around 1910.
beyond the hill
Viral treats
Hercules Candy gained over 1 million followers for its candymaking and sarcastic family banter
By Charlotte Price asst. culture editor
Photos by Ike Wood asst. photo editor
S
ugar, water and corn syrup. That’s all it takes to make Hercules Candy Company’s famous ribbon candy — or one of their viral TikTok videos. “Candy making is relatively very simple,” said Craig Andrianos, social media manager and son of Hercules Candy’s owners. “It’s not really any secret ingredients or anything, just sugar, water, corn syrup, and you can find that recipe if you go to Google. So we’re like, ‘We might as well give the recipe away ourselves.’” Hercules Candy in East Syracuse has been passed down through the Andrianos family since around 1910. Millions of viewers on social media watch as candymakers hand craft sweets like ribbon candy, chocolate-covered creams, sour candies and more. Halloween, the hallmark candy holiday, is coming up, but compared to Christmas, it’s “no big deal” to Terry Andrianos, co-owner of Hercules Candy. Hercules Candy is busy all year round — in fact, their viral candy videos have made them so busy that Craig isn’t posting the family’s usual Halloween “Helga the Witch” sketch this year. Craig said Terry is still playing catch up from a recent surge of views, so the business can’t accommodate any extra orders that more videos would bring in. Terry and Steven Andrianos purchased their current storefront about eight years ago. The family had been running their candy business
A map displayed in Hercules Candy tracks customers’ hometowns with colorful pushpins.
see candy store page 8
Two SUNY Upstate Medical University employees were detained by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on Wednesday. The men were taken into custody before entering immigration court hearings to finalize their legal status, the Civil Service Employees Association said in a release. Both employees worked in the environmental services department at SUNY Upstate, a state-owned hospital in Syracuse. They have worked in New York state since 2022 and 2024, respectively, according to CSEA. One employee is a CSEA member, while the other is represented by Upstate United University Professions. In a Wednesday night statement to The Daily Orange, UUP President Frederick Kowal said the union would “stand shoulder to shoulder” with its members, fighting for the right to due process. “(The men) acted in good faith to finalize their legal status,” Kowal said. “But as we have seen over and over under the anti-immigrant regime in place in Washington D.C., they were met with handcuffs.” In its statement, CSEA said it stands in solidarity with the workers and called the detainment of people following the legal process “unjust” and “inhumane.” “They are part of our Upstate family, they are our co-workers, our neighbors, and valued contributors to the hospital and community,” CSEA President Mary Sullivan said in the statement. “No one should be punished for following the law. Our union members and all hospital employees deserve dignity, respect and the chance to live and work without fear.” The reason ICE detained the employees is “unclear,” Kowal said, and they are currently being held in a federal detention facility in Batavia, awaiting potential deportation. SUNY Upstate and ICE did not immediately respond to The D.O.’s requests for comment as of early Thursday morning. kjacks19@syr.edu
on campus
10 years later, Obergefell says marriage equality fight isn’t over By Brenne Sheehan asst. news editor
In 2015, Jim Obergefell was the face of a landmark Supreme Court case ruling same-sex marriage legal across the United States. A decade later, he told Syracuse University students he’s continuing his fight as SCOTUS plans to rule on Davis v. Ermold next week, which could overturn the historic precedent his case set.
The lead plaintiff in Obergefell v. Hodges, Obergefell spoke to students at the 7th annual Potash Keynote Speaker event Wednesday evening, organized by SU’s LGBTQ+ Resource Center and hosted at the Newhouse School of Public Communications. In a conversation moderated by Emily Stewart, the LGBTQ+ Resource Center’s director, Obergefell shared stories about his late partner, John Arthur, and
advised students on how to engage in LGBTQ+ activism amid targeted attacks at a national level. Opening the conversation, Obergefell talked about how he met Arthur back in the 90s, when coming out “wasn’t nearly as easy as it is today.” His husband Arthur was later diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — a terminal nervous system disease — and died in 2013. They were together for 22 years.
In 2013, they decided to get married, but faced challenges living in Ohio at the time. Then, the state enforced a 2004 law exclusively defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. “It all starts with John,” Obergefell said. “We wanted marriage, but we also both agreed that we wanted marriage in exactly what marriage meant to everyone else. We weren’t willing to do a symbolic ceremony.”
With Arthur’s declining health, Obergefell obtained a Maryland marriage license, which doesn’t require both partners to be present when issuing. He crowdfunded a medical charter flight to bring Arthur there for the ceremony, he said. But later, when Arthur was in hospice care, Obergefell realized the state of Ohio wouldn’t legally recognize him as his partner’s husband on his death see obergefell page 5