I can say this much, I have had a link to my college football blog on my linkedin profile for a long time. In GWT it does not show linkedin as a domain that links to me. In OSE it does not show linkedin as a domain that links to me. So my guess is either they are unable to crawl or find the links in my profile, the links are nofollow, or they simply aren't passing any link juice.

Just checked, there are a few links to my public profile and it is http and not https, so it is being crawled and is indexed. The links are not nofollowed. Seems the links aren't passing and juice.

Google strips special characters out of search. For one, no one in a million years will do a search with Google and include a trademark symbol anyway. But if they did for some reason, Google would simply strip it out. You do not need to optimize for keywords with special characters. Just optimize for the keyword itself and you will be fine.

Ask yourself why you are using a domain and if you can accomplish the exact same thing by simply making a subdirectory. If you can, drop the subdomain. Always use subdirectories.

Google treats sub domains as separate websites, so having a different IP address doesn't matter, just makes it more separate I guess. That's why I wouldn't bother. Why separate your content?

SEO rule #1: Never use subdomains. Ever. For any reason.

Ask yourself this, what's the difference between putting these 100 pages on a subdomain as opposed to a subdirectory? None? Then why bother? Make it a subdirectory!

99 times out of 100 you will say no difference to the question above. In the random instance that you do have some kind of reasoning for using a subdomain that will get you something different, then sure, why not, but I doubt you can find a reason. Subdomains are treated as separate domains by Google. Why would you hinder your SEO efforts for no reason? Just put your 100 pages in a subdirectory of the domain and link to it from your website internally. That's all I would do.