If Baylor University administrators have more bounce in their step these days, it goes beyond a newly released “town-gown” survey that shows locals have strikingly favorable views of the Big 12 campus.

Residents surprised some on campus by saying they felt Baylor had a significantly rich impact on our town, whether it involved providing arts and cultural opportunities for our community, offering a potent economic infusion into the area or helping forge a high-quality labor force, some of whom stick around after graduation.

Charles Tolbert, chairman of Baylor’s sociology department, acknowledges that some in the Baylor family wrongly assumed the same town-gown tensions locally that one often finds elsewhere. In fact, some faculty members gasped when survey results were revealed at a recent faculty meeting.

Yes, some of us in the news media were surprised, too. This decade has seen Baylor swept up in great controversy over strong-willed presidents, struggles between the university and Baylor Alumni Association, scandal in the men’s basketball program, the shooting death of a basketball player and uproar over faculty tenure.

Yet, when 1,137 McLennan County adults were asked what first came to mind when Baylor was mentioned, 23 percent said academics, 19 percent said sports, 16 percent said religion, 8 percent said expense (too much of it) and 6 percent said bears.

Just 2 percent — 27 people — cited conflict or controversy.

“One reason is that time has passed,” Tolbert told me. “People are able to focus on the positives. That’s good. Secondly, it depends who you ask. We really wanted to get beyond the Baylor constituency for this survey and seek out John Q. Public.”

Tolbert, in overseeing this survey, is proud that 55 percent of those surveyed said they had no connection to Baylor.

To ensure further objectivity, Tolbert instructed his team of callers not to volunteer they were doing the phone survey through Baylor (though, he added, they were instructed to be forthright if asked).

Baylor even shelled out $4,000 so nothing revealing Baylor came up on local caller ID devices. That precaution alone cost Baylor’s Center for Community Research and Development nearly 25 percent of its budget for the survey, Tolbert says.

What’s more, the center — realizing last fall that residents in our county were being inundated with irksome prerecorded calls by candidates and pseudo-political surveys — resolved to wait till after Election 2008.

Pretty thorough, I’d say. So what could possibly go wrong?

Just enough, apparently.

The phone survey began right after the historic election of our nation’s first black president. Unfortunately, news reports quickly surfaced around town about a hangman’s noose found in a tree on campus, plus students supposedly angry over the election burning Obama signs.

The wires quickly crackled and sizzled with these stories.

Concerned Baylor officials soon determined the reports were false. Students eventually came forward to admit the noose was no noose but, rather, a badly constructed rope swing built for a couple of lovebirds who quickly resolved it wasn’t all that comfortable and so abandoned it.

As for the burning of Obama campaign signs, university officials found the items burned were computer boxes.

Tolbert suspects the brief controversy skewed results slightly among local blacks, who were least likely of all county residents to give favorable ratings to Baylor. Even so, blacks still registered a significant 70 percent approval of the university.

John Barry, Baylor vice president for marketing and communications, tells me he has no intention of ignoring this blip in the survey. Already, the campus has been involved in activities with the Cen-Tex African-American Chamber of Commerce. It participated in a recent visit by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s son.

As for last fall’s uproar over a poorly engineered love seat and smoldering boxes, I can only tell you that mere mention of the Election Night mishaps still makes normally placid, diplomatic, collegial Baylor President David Garland’s fists clench and blood vessels pop.