former newt

ok so i've started college and am already getting pretty interested in a girl. i'm talkin relationship interested, not just one-night-stand interested. maybe i should clarify that she's a year ahead of me in the same scholar program that i'm in at my university, so i had known her slightly before the following. it started when we met at a party to which a bunch of people from the program i'm in went as a group. i just kinda relaxed instead of actually joining in on drinking or dancing or the extraneous drugs floating around. she's usually one of the girls who drinks with her friends and dances the whole night. but she seemed to want to meet some of the underclassmen in the program, so she started talkin to me. she ended up spending basically the entire duration of our stay at the party talkin to me. i didn't really think too much about it at first, since that's happened to me a few times before. but as our group of fellow scholars went to 2 more parties, i ended up spending those times with her as well. so i started getting interested, since i think she's pretty cute. i got her screenname and number after that, and since then i've talked to her online for a few hours at a time, every night with few exceptions. now i'd have definitely made it clear i want this to progress into something more, except she said "i'm not hitting on you or anything" a few times. the strange thing is, i've been getting these sly little insinuations from her friends and mine about us, and i hear when she talks to my friends she expresses "slightly more than casual interest."

so what the hell's goin on here? is she or is she not hitting on me?

and finally, i actually enjoy being her friend, and if she doesn't actually want a relationship, i don't want to ruin our friendship. what should i do in order to make it clear that i am interested in a relationship without being too aggressive and straining our friendship?