Immaturity knows no age.

If you need proof of that, look no further than recent reports from Butler County concerning a fight at Mars School District — allegedly set off by a student’s use of “hateful” words — and a series of events scheduled this month to take on the issue of bullying at senior centers and high rises, where officials say the social climate can boarder on “junior high on steroids.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Bullying is alive and well in both our public schools and our senior centers.

No one should be surprised. But concerned? Absolutely.

This isn’t the kind of bullying that your parents taught you to stand up to as a child. No one is after anyone’s lunch money or waiting for the right moment to stuff them into a locker while a teacher isn’t looking. It’s not youthful pranks that go a step too far; or young people that just aren’t as tough as you remember being in days gone-by.

This kind of conduct has no place in our schools or anywhere else in our society. And these reports are a timely reminder that we need to keep asking an important question:

Why is bullying pervasive in our culture?

Why are the stories senior citizens share so similar to those of young people in our schools?

If bullying really is a rite of passage into adulthood, as many people seem to think, why doesn’t anything seem to change once that rite has been endured?

The answer is that it is not a rite of passage. It’s a scourge that society has allowed to endure because many adults have accepted it as a continuing reality: something they were forced to confront and endure as young people, so it must be endemic.

Again: that’s not true. If we decide not to allow bullying — to punish it decisively and quickly where it is found — then things will get better. Not perfect, but better.

This problem doesn’t start, or end, with childhood. But it can stop with all of us. If we decide that enough is enough.