During last week’s Barrington Town Council meeting, a member of this community spoke passionately about the proposed housing development at Belton Court, to a body that mostly ignored what she had to say. Falsely believing they could not engage with her directly, they responded in vague generalities.

One of those vague comments still gnaws at us, even a week later. The council president told the woman, who has become an organizer for concerned citizens on this topic, that even though she represents 600 Barrington residents, he’s waiting to hear from the 15,400 other residents. The condescending implication is that she represents a fringe minority, with differing opinions shared by the silent majority.

The fallacy of that viewpoint was made apparent the very next night, when some 400 people poured into the Barrington Middle School auditorium to listen to a planning board meeting on the matter. The crowd never got an opportunity to speak, so we don’t know exactly what they would have said, but the message was clear — an oversized number of people are at the very least interested in, and most likely highly concerned, about this overly dense, totally incongruous residential plan.

In this case, the numbers speak for themselves. More people attended this meeting than attended most financial town meetings over the past decade. More people attended this meeting than any meeting related to the school district’s most controversial topics — start times, mask policy, de-leveling, etc. More people attended this meeting than any public meeting we can recall.

Those who dismiss the crowd as a minority fringe have societal blinders on. This is not an algorithm-driven Facebook feed, where minority fringes loom large and loud. This is real life.

It’s true that in our social media circles, the loudest and most visible are often the minority viewpoints, and the majority often watch from the background. But real life is different. In real life, especially in public discourse, most crowds represent true majorities. Here in Barrington, in real life, hundreds of people are organizing, attending and speaking out about this Belton Court project.

These people and their concerns must not be dismissed or labeled as a vocal minority. They are not. They, in fact, represent a prevailing viewpoint in Barrington, where people who have chosen to live in this community, investing in real estate and property taxes to do so, are deeply concerned about this project and its potential future impacts.

This project could have broad impacts on property values, home equity, property taxes, school facilities, public education and quality of life for the 6,000-plus households in Barrington. The fact that hundreds of them are actively engaged in the process — joining groups, attending meetings, writing letters and speaking out — shows they care about what happens here. It would be nice if town leadership took them seriously.