This e-mail arrived at 8:31 a.m. and made me feel a little better:
Dear [redacted],
All else aside, I would like to really apologize for not reading the article this last class. Sorry for my/our poor 'studentship' when it makes your teaching hard to impossible, it was pretty shitty of us.
Sincerely,
[redacted].
Not so much better that I'm actually grading their papers, mind, but it's a start.
