>I'm also not thrilled by the email he sent the student. I feel like communicating with students outside of class time is absolutely part of the job of instruct

>I'm also not thrilled by the email he sent the student. I feel like communicating with students outside of class time is absolutely part of the job of instructor; his email reads to me like someone saying "I'm not paid enough to do the entire job I was hired for". That wouldn't fly in any other context. If he decided to just not show up to some lectures he was hired to teach, what would the university say if he told them he wasn't being paid enough to attend every class? He may be dealing with a shitty deal from the administratio, but passing it along to those even weaker than him is hardly admirable. You are wrong, then. The fiction the university maintains is that he is only being paid for the hours he does in class, plus a certain number of marking hours, which have been exhausted. What you're describing is called a "salaried position".