The military is not hard to spot on campus.

At Penn State, it occupies the Wagner Building as well as several downtown recruiting offices along College Avenue, Atherton Street and Fraser Street.

While it is unclear on what the university spends federal funds, as long as Penn State offers military recruiters the same access it offers private-sector recruiters, the university will remain eligible for these funds, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling earlier this month.

The Court upheld a statute linking federal funds from -- among other places -- the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security with a requirement to grant military recruiters the same access to universities as other recruiters. The Court ruled the statute in question "does not place an unconstitutional condition on the receipt of federal funds."

Some schools challenged the statute on the grounds that the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on sexual orientation violated schools' policies against discrimination.

These schools maintained that the statute violated their First Amendment rights by requiring them to host an organization that operated contrary to their policies. The Court disagreed, saying that there is no constitutional right to federal funding and that the law schools could exclude the military on the condition that funding would be lost, too.

But while universities such as Penn State do not necessarily support every group that voices an opinion on their campuses, they do not have the right to limit the freedom of speech of these groups. If the law schools in this argument wanted to attack -- or at least chip away at -- the military's position on sexual orientation, then seeking refuge in the harbor of the First Amendment was a mistake.

Congress' prerogative to fund law schools and other universities, even when linked to military recruiting, is just that, its prerogative. It is not a First Amendment battle to be fought and won. In addition, the law schools involved may have jeopardized the battle to combat the military's sexual orientation policy, if that were, in fact, their intention.

The military should be afforded the same access as other recruiters, even if it seems shocking that federal funds may shrivel up if military recruiters get the boot.

But the real issue here is that law schools tried a backdoor method to elicit a ruling on the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and they failed.

The military is here to stay.