By Clifton B. Parker

CAMPUS PROTESTS: The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California filed a request Feb. 1 for information about alleged government spying during student-led protests at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. The Freedom of Information Act request was filed on behalf of UC Santa Cruz Students Against the War and Berkeley Stop the War Coalition. Last April, the student groups held rallies protesting military recruitment on their campuses. The events later showed up on a Department of Defense database — obtained and first reported in December by NBC News — as threatening activities. ... STEM CELLS: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made a $100 million donation toward stem cell research to his old school, Johns Hopkins University, where he is a former board chairman. A substantial part of the donation will be used to fund stem cell research, a source with knowledge of the gift said. ... TREASURE TROVE: Hundreds of the state's historical relics that have been tucked away in storage and available only to curators and scholars are going on public view as part of a celebration of the UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library's 100th year on campus. The exhibition will run nine months at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. On display will be items such as the tiny gold nugget that sparked the California Gold Rush and about 350 other items from the library's vaults. ... BIG TYPO: Punctuation errors on a plaque at Stanford University have upset careful readers in Palo Alto, the San Jose Mercury News reported. The plaque, about a key point in the university's history, currently states that "the Stanford's purchased 'the farm' from the Gordon's in 1876." The newspaper reported that Stanford is working on a correction. ... RELATIVE GIFT: UC Irvine awarded a newly created, coveted residency at its medical center to the son of a man who had just pledged $250,000 to the radiology department, the Los Angeles Times reported. Irvine officials said that there was nothing inappropriate about the way the residency was awarded and denied a link to the gift. ... GRADING PROFESSORS: A conservative alumni group at UCLA in January withdrew its offer to pay students $100 to file tapes and notes on what professors say during courses. A statement from the group's founder, Andrew Jones, said that debate over the offer had become "a distraction from the real problem, which is classroom indoctrination." Professors at UCLA and elsewhere have criticized the tactic of paying students as unethical and a violation of professors' intellectual property rights.