A Windsor high school student faces possible expulsion after he says school officials took a tweet he wrote out of context, which related to a violent threat allegedly made by another student.

Awab Abdullahi is a Grade 12 student at Holy Names Catholic High School in Windsor.

Earlier this month, he tweeted a message, which included a variant of the N-word in it, advising that another student was going to "shoot up this school."

CBC News has seen a screenshot of the tweet in question. It reads: "Word this n----- gonna shoot up this school." The tweet also included two emojis, showing two smiley faces that are crying from laughter.

Abdullahi and his lawyer say he was referring in his tweet to another student, who they say was seen in a video making threats against a teacher and the school.

Yet Abdullahi ended up being suspended for the equivalent of a month of school, while the person making the alleged threat got a much lesser suspension, according to the student and his lawyer.

"I'm just, like, surprised how I was treated so unfairly for something I had no intention of doing," Abdullahi told CBC News in an interview.

The Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board defended its response in a written statement from spokesman Stephen Fields.

"In today's climate where mass shootings have become a regular occurrence, students need to know that any threats that suggest such violence are going to be taken extremely seriously," he wrote.

'No intent to shoot up the school'

The student's lawyer, Lakin Afolabi, told CBC News that his client was "investigated and suspended for 20 days, while the student that made the video and the student that posted the video threatening to rape the teacher and shoot up the school was only suspended for five days, allegedly."

Lawyer Lakin Afolabi says that it was obvious that his client had no intent to harm anyone at his school. (CBC)

CBC News has not seen the alleged video. The school board officials would not speak to how many days the second student was suspended because of a policy not to divulge information about individual student cases.

Afolabi said that while school authorities may have initially believed Abdullahi was talking about himself in the tweet, it soon became clear that he was referring to the person making the alleged threat.

He said Abdullahi also explained the situation to police, who arrested the Grade 12 student but did not charge him.

"I think that when things came to light, it was obvious that there was no intent to shoot up the school," Afolabi said.

That's part of what makes the imbalance in suspensions so jarring, Afolabi said.

'What's the difference?'

Afolabi said the student in that video is white, while Abdullahi is black.

"You have a black kid with a Middle Eastern name that warns of a threat and then you have a white kid that makes the threat and the white kid is punished less severely than the black kid. What's the difference?" Afolabi said, when speaking with CBC Radio's Windsor Morning.

"I would love to find out the real reason why he is being punished so harshly, more harshly than the person that threatens to rape a teacher."

Loba Afolabi, the co-ordinator for the Black Student Alliance at the University of Windsor, contends that the alleged discrepancy in the punishment handed out to the students is related to the fact that one is black and one is white.

"I absolutely and unapologetically declare that I attribute it to the racial factor involved," said Afolabi, who is the brother of Abdullahi's lawyer.

Abdullahi told CBC he agrees with the Black Student Alliance that his race is a factor in how his situation was handled.

Lakin Afolabi, the student's lawyer, said his client is facing a possible expulsion. The London, Ont.,-based lawyer is fighting this and the suspension Abdullahi has been handed.

In an email, a Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board spokesman told CBC News that suggestions a student would be disciplined based on race are "offensive."

The spokesman also said the board does not publicly discuss individual cases of student discipline.