Is The Deacon the best dorm at University of Cincinnati?

In each apartment, each bedroom has its own bathroom. There is a kitchen, living room w/ TV, coffee table and couches. There is also a washing machine and dryer. My experience at the Deacon was mixed. First, the fire alarms would go off every couple of days or weeks at unexpected times. There were some times when the fire alarm would go off at night. One time a kid threw a burning oven glove down the trash chute and we all were evacuated out of the building for over an hour. Another thing is the walls are super thin so you could probably hear your roommate’s conversations. The hallways in the building smell like drugs and is littered and disgusting. On top of that, if you need maintenance, your shower is not ‘emergency’ work if anything happens to it. On the ground floor, there is a mail reception area and if big packages are delivered, they are thrown out on the table, so literally anyone could steal it. Also, thefts have been reported in the building. Some of the front door locks have been broken into and some horrific damage has been done. I would recommend this if you can deal with (very) loud neighbors (at times), fire alarms going off at any time, or if you have a good security system.

This place is really nice. There were issues last fall/this spring with fire alarms and break-ins, but the issues appear to have been fixed. Fire alarms haven’t gone off in the time I’ve been back and there haven’t been any reports of break-ins lately. They’ve started locking all of the exterior doors to help limit the people in the building. They used to be unlocked during the day. Maintenance is quick to fix issues you’re having (COVID slowed things down a bit, but they’re mostly back to normal). The kitchens are nice, the bathrooms are nice, the bedrooms are nice. The studios are a little on the small side, but the other apartments are a lot more spacious. The amenities are also great, there’s a pool, a gym, and business center with free printing onsite, so you don’t have to go to the rec or to campus computer labs to print if you don’t want to. The rec probably has more/better equipment though. The mailroom wasn’t accepting packages for a few months (COVID), so they ended up in the mailroom with risk of things being stolen, but they’re back to accepting packages and there’s no longer risk of your stuff being stolen.